Now I Know: The Women Who Ensure No Servicemember is Buried Alone

View this email in your browser · Missed one? Visit the Archives

This is a sad but nice story, I think. -- Dan

The Women Who Ensure No Servicemember is Buried Alone

Arlington National Cemetery, the most notable military burial ground in the United States, opened in 1864, during the American Civil War. Its 600+ acres are the final resting place for more than 400,000 American servicemembers and two American Presidents, William Howard Taft and John F. Kennedy. According to its official website, more than three million people visit the cemetery in a typical year. Some visit the gravesite of a lost loved one, others are there to see the memorials to JFK or other famous Americans, and some go to see the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. And some are there for funerals.

And some of those funeral-goers are there rather often -- even though they don't know the person being buried.

In 1948, Gladys Vandenberg was visiting Arlington when she and her husband noticed something particularly disturbing: a standard military burial, with a chaplain and honor guard, but no other attendees. The servicemember being laid to rest was being buried alone. And Gladys Vandenberg was in a position to do something about it. She was married to Hoyt Vandenberg who was the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and she was an active member of the Officers' Wives Club. She decided that as long as she had the power to do so, no Air Force member would have a funeral so sparsely attended. She brought the matter to the Officers' Wives Club and they agreed -- one of them would go to every Air Force funeral at Arlington to ensure that nothing like that ever happened again. Over time, the other branches of the military followed suit, and today, a member of an organization known as the "Arlington Ladies" attends every military funeral at the hallowed cemetery. Volunteers cover each of the 20-30 burials each weekday, with some attending as many as ten in one day.

The women are there to represent the branch of government in which the deceased served; as We Are the Mighty notes, "she’s not there to grieve but to honor the fallen.." Each Lady follows a formal ritual for each servicemember. She is escorted by a member of the honor guard and per We Are The Mighty, if there are grievers in attendance, she "bows to the grieving, hands them two notes [as seen above], and is escorted away. The notes include an official one from the service Chief of Staff and his wife – and a handwritten note from the woman herself." If there is no one else in attendance, the Arlington Lady takes a more active role. In 2020, Military Families magazine spoke with a Lady representing the Navy, who said that when no grievers are present, "she is presented with the flag, takes the time to honor the deceased’s service and then bids fair winds and following seas to the service member."

As of 2016, "about 200 women (in the past, their numbers also included two men) participate in the program at any given time," according to AARP., and "each has a connection to the service as wife, mother, widow or veteran.' In total, the group is estimated to have attended more than 50,000 funerals since 1999.

Now I Know is supported by readers like you. Please consider becoming a patron by supporting the project on Patreon.

Click here to pledge your support. (If you do, in gratitude, you'll have an ad-free Now I Know experience going forward.)

Bonus fact: Arlington National Cemetery is located where it is, in part, to spite Confederate General Robert E. Lee. After the Civil War broke out, the Union levied a tax on all Confederate property and required that landowners pay the tax in person (which, given that they were rebelling, wasn't going to happen). The United States used the non-payment of taxes to seize property, including Lee's property in Arlington. And when the Union ran low on place to bury its war dead three years later, Lee's home became a good option -- burying people there would effectively prevent the traitorous Lee from ever moving back home. The government sold Lee's entire estate to the entity building the cemetery. After the war, though, Lee's wife sued, arguing that the government should only have sold just enough to cover the unpaid taxes, and the Supreme Court agreed. The government ended up paying Lee's wife $150,000, or the equivalent of more than $4 million today.

From the Archives: Why We Give 21-Gun Salutes: Another tradition of military burials.

Like today's Now I Know? Share it with a friend -- just forward this email along.

And if someone forwarded this to you, consider signing up! Just click here.

Forward

Archives · Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2022 Now I Know LLC, All rights reserved.
You opted in, at http://NowIKnow.com via a contest, giveaway, or the like -- or you wouldn't get this email.

Now I Know is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. Some images above via Wikipedia.

Now I Know's mailing address is:

Now I Know LLC

P.O. Box 536

Mt. Kisco, NY 10549-9998

Add us to your address book

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your email address or unsubscribe from this list

Older messages

Now I Know: The Power of Being Bored

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Just don't take it too far, like, by starting fires and stuff. View this email in your browser · Missed one? Visit the Archives This is a re-run from 2017. I hope you do not find it boring, unless

Now I Know: And He Couldn't Use the Discount Anyway

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

The plan was malicious, but the error stupid View this email in your browser · Missed one? Visit the Archives Not sure I like the title for this one, but what can ya do. -- Dan And He Couldn't Use

Now I Know: The Mystery of the 175-Year-Old Battery-Powered Bell

Monday, May 16, 2022

The bell tolls for whomever wants to hear it, but we aren't quite sure how it continues to do so View this email in your browser · Missed one? Visit the Archives Hope you had a good weekend! To the

How the Now I Know Community Helped Mozambique

Friday, May 13, 2022

Be proud of yourself: You did this. View this email in your browser · Missed an issue? Click here! If you're new to Now I Know, you'll notice that today's format is different than the rest

Now I Know: Save Ferris . . . and Juan

Thursday, May 12, 2022

How a TV show kept a man out of jail View this email in your browser · Missed one? Visit the Archives Hi! This is a re-run from 2012. Apologies for the double re-run this week -- chalk it up to bad

Monday Musings (Why Daily News is Bogus)

Monday, July 4, 2022

Read in your browser here. Hi friends, Greetings from Lisbon! I came out here for a wedding, and will now spend the week rewriting my Ultimate Guide to Writing Online. If the edit goes well, the essay

The Issue with Myths

Monday, July 4, 2022

Are we dreaming? “The American dream;” you hear about it all the time. I wonder if we've always taken it the wrong way. A dream can be an aspiration, sure. That's how we generally think of “the

Need a creative pep talk?

Monday, July 4, 2022

View in browser 🌟 Rise Above the Overwhelm single coaching sessions are sliding scale in July: Talk through your creative conundrums + get your 🦆🦆🦆 in a row to finally finish that project! Sign up here

The Long Game 112: Protein Intake, Unhappiness, Taste, Hard Work, The Network State

Monday, July 4, 2022

💊 A Male Birth Control Pill, Cities and Ambition, Beliefs are Fashion, Status as a Service, Greg App, and Much More! ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

Search Results Annotations at Google

Monday, July 4, 2022

👋 You are bound to learn something from this new piece. Enjoy! Don't forget that you subscribed to this email for a good reason. Search Results Annotations at Google BY Jean-Christophe Chouinard

Absolute Basics

Monday, July 4, 2022

If you're looking to get better at Google Sheets, this video might not be for you. I just released an Absolute Basics set of videos and it's for absolute beginners. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

Z's 3-in-3 - This is the dose of positivity you needed today

Monday, July 4, 2022

Reading time: < 2 min See cocoa farmers taste chocolate for the first time (VIDEO)Quadriplegic wal Z's 3-in-3 - This is the dose of positivity you needed today By Zvonimir Fras • Issue #22 •

[Free workshop] How to get new customers (while you sleep)

Sunday, July 3, 2022

And it doesn't involve TikTok, Tweetstorms or posting every day ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

The Issue with Interpretation

Sunday, July 3, 2022

It depends on what it depends on ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

❓ Making Money with Farmland & Agriculture - Playbook

Sunday, July 3, 2022

Welcome to the Heartland…rows of corn and stacks of cash Welcome to the next available playbook! Right in time for the 4th of July holiday, we're discussing ways you can get into the pulse of