I got the flag!

In the continuing saga of our encounter with Arlington National Cemetery:

I downloaded the form online for an interment flag and walked into our teensy small town local post office and gave it to the lady at the counter, and sure enough, she handed me a box with a 5-foot by 9-foot American flag inside, labeled for internment. The lady said they normally just deal with funeral directors for the flags.

I had never heard of it before. Our tax dollars are indeed at work.

The inurnment in the Columbarium is one week from Thursday. I sure hope we have nice weather for it. Unfortunately the cherry blossoms don't start blooming until at least two weeks later.

Here are some photos of the Columbarium in springtime.

---

Update: When I was looking for an image for this post, I stumbled across this very lovely photo essay on the Arlington National Cemetery service of Lieutenant George Stalk, U.S. Army Air Force. Well worth the click.

Arlington Cemetery is a go

Arlington National Cemetery called and left a message this afternoon that they got the confirmation that they needed from the National Archives in St. Louis that my father (WWII First Army veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, crossing of the Rhine and Ruhr, etc.) is eligible to have his ashes placed there. It was touch-and-go for a while, since all the records we had was one old photocopy of the front of his honorable discharge, and a fire at the National Archives had destroyed a lot of Army veteran records from 1912-1959.

The message was long and and she rattled off her standard speech quickly - something about how they'll do a short military ceremony with gun firing and the flag will go on the caisson (I'm not sure how this works - over the teensy little box of ashes?), then they will do the flag-folding deal and give it to the next of kin. (I still have to actually get the flag, but supposedly they're available free for this purpose from all post offices - I have the form ready to go).

So I'll call back tomorrow and schedule it. I have no idea how long this takes to schedule.
Hmm, I wonder if it would be too tacky to videotape it. What do you think? (I'm sure I wouldn't be the first one).

The video clip is a 4-minute BBC piece on Arlington National Cemetery.