Bringing the Dead Home
UPDATE: From the D&C comment thread -
As a funeral director, I can say this is a fabrication. I have been to airports many times picking up remains and I know how this procedure works. Caskets are shipped in airtrays (with a plywood bottom and cardboard box). One would never see an exposed casket. They do remove caskets from the planes on the conveyor belts (simply because of the height of the cargo bay to the ground) but they are then loaded onto a cart to be transported to the freight office. They may pull 3-4 carts at a time (like a train) but human remains are always hauled on a cart by themselves… never with other luggage.
There is no way anyone could see a flag draped casket coming down a conveyor belt. An Airtray maybe, but never an exposed caset.
Checking the Net before going to work. Our county executive, Maggie Brooks, is shooting her mouth off about a letter to the editor that she’s taken at face value.
Democrat & Chronicle
Hoag explained that as she waited at the airport with friends, she saw a soldier in uniform standing at attention near a commercial airplane as the luggage came off. She then saw a coffin draped with an American flag come down a luggage conveyor on the runway.
The coffin was put into a baggage cart with other luggage and driven off with the uniformed soldier in the cart.”
Hoag wrote an op-ed essay that was published Tuesday in the Democrat and Chronicle, describing what she says she saw.
Maggie weighs in:
“It is unfathomable to me that our federal government would allow a fallen military hero to be returned home in this manner, and then transport him along with someone’s checked luggage,” Brooks, a Republican, wrote in a terse letter to the Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.
Brooks said the Defense Department should be required to notify an airport when the coffin of a fallen soldier is being transported so that proper arrangements are ensured.
“I am asking you to do whatever is necessary to end this abhorrent practice,” Brooks wrote. “Our military personnel and our veterans deserve better.”
Of course, she could have checked with a lot of folks, first. Like the airport, who, BTW, reports to her.
Yet Damelio said Hoag’s story doesn’t make sense and said the Defense Department has always shown great care with soldiers’ coffins.
Procedurally, a coffin wouldn’t come down a luggage belt with other baggage, he said.
Also, a baggage cart isn’t large enough to fit a coffin and other luggage, he said.
“It couldn’t happen. It’s physically impossible,” Damelio said.
And the Defense Department:
Defense Department spokeswoman Cynthia Smith was unaware of the incident late Wednesday but said the witness’ description doesn’t correlate with military procedure.
Remains from a soldier killed in Iraq are taken to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, then usually flown to a soldier’s home, she said. Military escorts accompany each flight, whether domestic or military. When the coffin reaches the home area, it is met by an honor guard of two people and then transported to a funeral home, she said.
“We do everything to ensure that proper respect is given to the fallen service members and their families,” Smith said.
Just how would you ship an object the size off a coffin? They have always gone by frieght, on a train, in the hold of a ship, or in a compartment on a plane. That’s how grandma would come home if she died while visiting the old country. Would you rather they bought the corpse a seat?
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