Mother Works to Change Law so She can be Buried with Son Killed in Iraq
COREY
New Bedford Standard-Times
Ayesha Aleem
Boston University Washington News Service
Dec. 3, 2009
WASHINGTON – Denise Anderson knows loss. She knows what missing a friend feels like. She knows how trying it is to live every day without a loved one.
On Nov. 12, 2008, Anderson and her husband, Jeff Margolin, were shopping at Cardi’s Furniture in South Attleboro, Mass., when her cell phone rang. Her daughter, Kristin, was on the phone, frantically asking Anderson to come home immediately. When the couple rushed home, there was an Army vehicle and police outside the house.
“I knew something had happened. He was just doing his job,” Anderson said in a telephone interview from her home in Mansfield, Mass.
Anderson’s 21-year-old son, Army Spc. Corey M. Shea had been killed in Mosul, Iraq. He had been shot dead by an Iraqi soldier. The Mansfield native had one more month before he would have returned home. “It just stinks. It’s just not fair,” Anderson said.
Anderson is now supporting legislation that would allow her to be buried at the same gravesite as her son, who is interred at Massachusetts National Cemetery in Bourne. Her request to be buried with Shea was turned down by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-4, said he and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., tried to appeal to the VA after Anderson’s request was turned down. “I admire her enormously,” Frank said. “She’s a woman of great strength.”
Early this year Frank introduced the Corey Shea Act. The legislation was made part of a larger bill, the Veterans’ Small Business Assistance and Servicemembers Protection Act, which the House passed, 382-2, on Nov. 3.
According to the bill, the parent of a fallen veteran can request to be buried in the same gravesite as a child who is buried at a national cemetery that the VA administers. The veteran must have been unmarried, have no dependent children and have been killed in service after Oct. 7, 2001. Currently the policy extends only to spouses and dependent children.
In the Senate, the bill has been referred to the Veterans’ Affairs Committee. A hearing date has not been scheduled, according to Kawika Riley, the committee’s spokesperson. Committee chairman Daniel K. Akaka, D-Hawaii, has not taken a position on the legislation, Riley said.
Since Shea’s death, Anderson has set up the Corey Shea Memorial Fund at Mansfield High School, which Corey graduated from in 2005. The money comes from donations and fundraisers. With help from school staff members Anthony Modica and Sue Donovan, Anderson decides who gets funds to defray college costs.
“I didn’t want to give it to the jocks because Corey was one,” Anderson said. “I didn’t want to give it to the A students because Corey was not one. I wanted it to go to someone who had a hard time in school.”
Modica, a teacher at Mansfield High School since 1982, taught Shea for all four years. “I could tell from day one Corey was a man of heart,” Modica said. “He was a tall, lanky kid. He understood mutual respect and communicated clearly and concisely with me. One of the things that characterized Corey was his maturity. He was a good friend to a lot of kids here.”
Evan Vucci, a photographer with the Associated Press, was embedded with Shea’s platoon in Iraq in March and April of 2008. He remembers sitting with Shea and other soldiers one evening, talking in the doorway of the outpost, when a bullet passed through the group. “Everyone ran for cover. First we thought it was a sniper,” he said. Vucci recalls how he and Shea were joking later about the incident with the other soldiers.
“He was just a great kid,” Vucci said of Shea. “Super nice guy. Everyone loved him. He had a personality that drew everyone in.”
Shea was buried with full military honors, his casket drawn on a horse-drawn carriage down East Street in Mansfield. People lined the street on both sides, many holding the American flag, said Joseph Maruszczak, principal of the high school.
Anderson visits Shea’s gravesite two or three times a week, she said, and she still wears Shea’s high school ring with his name and year of graduation and all his dog tags from Iraq. “It’s all I got back of him,” she said.
Her son would call home from Iraq on Sundays, Anderson said. She had missed his call the Sunday before he died and she now replays his taped voice message. “If I look at something he likes, if I hear a song, if I see something, it’s really, really hard for me because it brings back memories of Corey,” Anderson said.
The VA denied Anderson’s request because it would require additional space, possibly at the cost of availability to veterans to whom they must give priority, according to a statement from a department spokesperson. The bill in its current form would cost the department an estimated $27,000 in the first year, $180,000 over five years, and $462,000 over ten years.
Anderson said she expected to be buried in the same gravesite as her son and not in a separate gravesite. However, she did not specify this in her request to the VA, she said. Shea has been interred deep enough to allow an additional coffin to fit in his grave, Anderson said.
Currently, a fallen veteran is entitled to one additional space in the same gravesite for a family member, said Jo Schuda, a VA spokeswoman. Depending on ground conditions of the cemetery, provision for a second family member can be made, she said. The department’s denial of Anderson’s request was based on the understanding that she was seeking a separate gravesite.
“I’m not a veteran,” Anderson said. “But for what I sacrificed and what he [Corey] sacrificed, I think I deserve this. It’s important to me that he’s not alone for eternity.”
Frank emphasized that his legislation would not displace any veterans. Repeats what was written above. As for the VA representative’s comment that this request would cost more, Frank said, “It’s an outrageous for them to say. I wish these people would think about the trillion-dollar cost of this war itself rather than the minimal cost of this. Terribly insensitive thing to say.”
The cemetery in Bourne is the only national cemetery in Massachusetts. Space to bury family members of fallen veterans is limited, said Paul McFarland, director of the cemetery. Honoring such requests depends on the size of gravesites and availability of space, he said.
Despite the shortage of space, 2,300 to 2,400 burials are performed yearly, McFarland said. Half of the cemetery’s 240 acres is dedicated to gravesites, with an estimated 25 acres to be added next year.
The remaining space is meant for irrigation and roadways, McFarland said. There are approximately 48,000 graves at the cemetery, which was established in 1980.
The bill would not apply to Arlington National Cemetery outside the nation’s capital because it does not come under the VA’s jurisdiction.
Anderson is not alone in her wish to be placed with her son when she dies.
Ruth Stonesifer is national president of American Gold Star Mothers, a nationwide organization of almost 2,000 members who have lost a son or daughter in service to the country. Stonesifer’s 28-year-old son, Kris, died on Oct. 19, 2001, “38 days after 9/11,” she said with heaviness in her voice.
The Army specialist was killed in a helicopter crash at an airstrip in Pakistan. “If this were an option for me, I would take it, too,” Stonesifer said. “American Gold Star Mothers stands behind this legislation,” she said of the Corey Shea Act.
Stonesifer’s son wanted his ashes to be scattered on a lake in Montana. “That’s where my ashes will be sprinkled too,” she said. “It’s very powerful when you lose a child. The bond is there. It’s even stronger when they get taken from you.”
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