Another Veterans Affairs scandal.
Via MODBEE
Amy Buenrostro was relieved when she learned earlier this month that the 12 tombstones she and her family found in the backyard of their new home did not mark any actual graves there. But she didn’t want them to stay in her backyard as steppingstones, which, as it turns out, is what the previous homeowner had purchased them as. The Department of Veterans Affairs and some families didn’t want the stones used that way, either, and have taken them off the family’s hands.
The discarded tombstones contained typos, were flawed in some other way, or had been replaced by a new one with a spouse’s name added. A deputy with Riverbank Police Services determined the previous owner purchased them at a discount from a now-closed business in Turlock that made marble and granite headstones. […]
The VA’s National Cemetery Administration also called. The administration had been alerted to the story because some of the tombstones belonged to veterans.
Spokeswoman Kristen Parker said veterans’ headstones are paid for by the administration and therefore are government property.
“When replacements are ordered or the originals are damaged upon arrival, cemeteries are supposed to dispose of them properly to maintain the dignity and respect of our veterans,” she said.
Esther Linen, daughter of World War II veteran Bernard Linen, said reading that a headstone intended for her father’s grave had been used as a steppingstone was “very distressing.”
“You can’t imagine how we (she and her siblings) felt,” she said.
Linen was put in contact with Parker, who already had arranged for representatives from the San Joaquin Valley National Cemetery to visit the Buenrostro family’s home to determine which headstones were government property.
The representatives removed and properly disposed of four headstones they determined were made for veterans.