Dozens – both young and old – gathered in Corpus Christi to honor three veterans laid to rest without family, ensuring no service member is ever buried alone.<\/p>\n
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 \u00a0Dozens of community members gathered Friday at the Coastal Bend State Veterans Cemetery to honor three veterans who were laid to rest without known family members present.<\/p>\n
The ceremony recognized Army veteran Mark Lee Moore and Navy veterans John C. Bowers and David Alan Dunn, who together served a combined 36 years in the U.S. armed forces. Their services were classified as unaccompanied burials, meaning the veterans had no relatives or close family members able to attend.<\/p>\n
Attendees said the purpose of showing up was simple: to ensure no veteran is ever buried alone<\/p>\n
Marion Wine, took both of her children out of school early to attend the ceremony \u2014 not to get a start on holiday travel, but to help them reflect on the meaning of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis week is the last week of school before Christmas Break and so I think it\u2019s really important to remember the season and celebrate the season,\u201d said Wine, an engineer at LyondellBasell. \u201cThis veteran in particular served for ten years and so I thought it would be a really great way to start to Christmas break to keep things in perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cash, Marion’s young son was happy to be there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to honor those who fought for our country and nobody should die alone,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unaccompanied burials rely heavily on community members, veterans organizations and active-duty service members to stand in for family.<\/p>\n
Among those paying their respects was Carlos Gonzalez, Command Master Chief at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, who attended in uniform.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does happen where there\u2019s sailors or service members that don\u2019t have family,\u201d Gonzalez said. \u201cWho knows what their story is? But I love saying \u2018no veteran gets left behind.\u2019 The sailor is not alone, this man is not alone \u2014 he has a family with the military and with the veterans.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Gonzalez, the ceremony also carried personal significance as he’s due to retire in April after nearly three decades in the Navy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis may be the last time I\u2019m wearing this uniform \u2014 service dress blues \u2014 because I\u2019ll be retiring in a different uniform,\u201d he said. \u201cSo what an honor to wear it this last time at this moment to share with this sailor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Organizers say unaccompanied burials are open to the public, and anyone can attend to help honor veterans who might otherwise be laid to rest alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dozens – both young and old – gathered in Corpus Christi to honor three veterans laid to rest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":{"0":"post-95244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-corpus-christi","9":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","10":"tag-corpus-christi-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}