Burying veteran is no easy task amid pandemic

The paperwork scramble is taking a good bit longer

Gloria Taylor of Bella Vista cleans headstones Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2020, at the Fayetteville National Cemetery as she and other volunteers prepare the cemetery for Veterans Day as a part of the Honor and Respect Headstone Cleaning Project organized by Bo's Blessings and the Fayetteville National Cemetery. (NWA Democrat-Gazette/Andy Shupe)
Gloria Taylor of Bella Vista cleans headstones Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2020, at the Fayetteville National Cemetery as she and other volunteers prepare the cemetery for Veterans Day as a part of the Honor and Respect Headstone Cleaning Project organized by Bo's Blessings and the Fayetteville National Cemetery. (NWA Democrat-Gazette/Andy Shupe)

Some military veterans' funerals have joined the long list of postponements caused by the covid-19 pandemic, prompting some families to overhaul burial plans for their recently deceased loved ones.

The virus has nearly shut down the federal agency responsible for keeping and locating the records required to prove a veteran's eligibility to be buried in a state or national cemetery.

The bureaucratic slowdown, caused by social-distancing measures at the National Personnel Records Center, has delayed veterans from getting the paperwork needed to receive military honors and funerals.

While families scrambling to find old military records is nothing new, the slowdown at the records center has held up funerals for families or caused them to have to pay to have their loved ones buried in private cemeteries, said Mada Stanley, director of the Arkansas State Veterans Cemetery in North Little Rock.

"It's costing them money because they are having to elect to go to a private cemetery when they shouldn't have to do that," Stanley said. "It should be a paid benefit that they have through the [U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs]."

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The issue has prompted Congress to step in and led the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs to urge families to start looking for records now.

Veterans are entitled to military honors when they die and have the option to be buried in a state or federal veterans cemetery for free if they were not dishonorably discharged. But certain records are required.

The most common form a veteran can submit is the DD-214, or discharge papers. While veterans receive a copy of the form after they are discharged from the military, often they lose it or families cannot quickly find it when their loved one dies, meaning they may need to get it from the records center, an agency under the National Archives and Records Administration.

The agency has said that because of social-distancing measures it has taken since March, there have been "some inefficiencies in workflow" leading to a delay in processing requests for records. The records center has been closed "except for emergencies," which includes requests that support burial honors.

But even with a small staff still working on emergency requests, those requests are taking longer. In the year before the pandemic, the agency took an average of six calendar days to process burial requests, and now it takes 11, the agency said.

Since March, the records center has processed more than 90,000 requests for records including more than 38,000 requests involving veteran burials, according to a statement from a spokesperson.

"Even from the earliest days of the pandemic, the NPRC has never been completely closed," according to an unattributed statement released by the National Archives Public and Media Communications. "It has always retained enough on-site staff to respond to its most urgent requests; those involving burials, medical emergencies, and homeless veterans seeking shelter."

But the staffing cutbacks have delayed burials for Arkansas veterans, said Stanley, who oversees the veterans cemetery in North Little Rock.

"The government office or the National Personnel Records Center is working at, like I said, a skeleton crew, where it's, you know, taking longer and longer for us to get the information," Stanley said.

Stanley recommended veterans and their families who want military honors and a burial either start looking for their forms now and store them in a safety deposit box, with a county clerk or with a county veteran service officer. Veterans can also file a pre-eligibility form with the VA.

In November, 233 members of Congress, including all four of Arkansas' representatives in the House, signed a letter addressed to Scott Levins, director of the National Personnel Records Center, encouraging him to "implement new policies and procedures" to process requests for records more quickly.

"Except for a limited number of emergency requests, since March of this year, our constituents' requests for military personnel records from NPRC have largely been unfulfilled," the letter said. "Moreover, there remains no definitive timeline in which our constituent veterans can expect to have their requests processed."

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