Long Unclaimed Ashes Finally Receive a Veterans’ Burial

Carolyn Arnston (left) and Denise Hatch at Wilhelm’s Portland Memorial Funeral home, where they discovered 34 veterans among thousands of unclaimed cremains.
Credit: Joni Land/Oregon Public Broadcasting

Encountering unclaimed cremated ashes is, unfortunately, not unique. Finding volunteers willing to sort through thousands of them to uncover those that belong to veterans — and thus earn a veterans’ burial — is nearly unheard of. Yet that’s the story of Carolyn Arntson and Denise Hatch of Portland, Oregon, who spent 10 years sifting through over 2,000 boxes of abandoned cremation ashes at Wilhelm’s Portland Memorial Funeral Home.

Through their efforts, the two women discovered 34 veterans — some dating back to the Civil War — who had been honorably discharged, and who finally got to enjoy a funeral with full military honors this June, along with an eternity spent out of the funeral home closet and interred at Willamette National Cemetery.

In an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting, the duo shared their unusual story. Their mission was prompted by Arntson’s work with the website Find A Grave, after she’d received several requests to locate someone’s grave site only to find that the person in question had never been interred anywhere.

Denise Hatch among the stacks of unclaimed remains at Wilhelm’s Portland Memorial Funeral Home
Credit: Carolyn Arntson

Arntson and Hatch began probing deeper into missing burials, and found that many of those unaccounted for were veterans. Said Arntson, “It makes me very sad that we had veterans who gave their time and energy to our country and for them to be left like that.” So, the two took on the massive undertaking of sorting through the stacks of remains at Wilhelm’s Portland Memorial to honor servicepeople with a proper veterans’ burial.

Wilhelm’s Portland Memorial has been in operation since 1901, and today calls an eight-story building home — as do 100,000 people who have died. Among them are the 2,000 unclaimed cremation ashes. “There are just rows and rows and rows of cardboard boxes,” Arntson shared, with some of them in such disrepair that ashes were spilling from them.

Because some of these remains were so old, many from before the adoption of Social Security numbers, the process of determining which belonged to a veteran was no small feat. After learning the name of the deceased, Arnton and Hatch painstakingly pored over veterans’ records, genealogy websites, and newspapers to ascertain who had served our country.

Boxes of cremated remains, discovered to be veterans, ahead of transport to Willamette National Cemetery.
Credit: Joni Land/Oregon Public Broadcasting

Some of those they discovered had served in the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I — including a nurse — and World War II. After receiving proof of their military service, Arnton and Hatch were able to secure a veterans’ burial at Willamette National Cemetery to lay these people to rest with their comrades.

After spending so many years combing through and researching the individuals within the stacks of remains, Arntson said seeing them off felt like bidding adieu to close friends. She described seeing the 34 veterans’ remains together, ready for transport to the national cemetery, as “triumphant.” Following the full veterans’ burial last month, Arnton and Hatch have good reason to feel proud, and hopefully found a moment to celebrate their victory.