Photo By Chad Menegay | Sgt. 1st Class Adam Metz with 16th Ordnance Battalion salutes the American flag before...... read more read more
FORT GREGG-ADAMS, Va. — When the fabric of America, star-spangled, is presented in a tight, triangular fold.
When the grand, old flag is carried on a casket and set down by pallbearers, and when the bugle blows “Taps,” and when rifles burst in a volley of fire with blank cartridges.
The impact can be powerful.
These moments can be viewed as proof that the U.S. military is a close-knit team of professionals bound by strong relationships and common values.
These honors can communicate deep-rooted respect for the service of a deceased active-duty service member, veteran or retiree and continued care for those they left behind.
“It’s a community engagement as a whole,” said Amanda Richards, the Fort Gregg-Adams funeral honors coordinator. “I believe that when we’re out there at the funerals, and the Soldiers are there they have a lot of respect for the families, and the families enjoy having us out there and the presentation done for their loved one.”
For Richards, the funeral honors program is a labor of love among the many responsibilities the Casualty Assistance Center fields.
“This job brings me home as a former Soldier,” Richards said. “It’s a very honorable thing to be able to be a part of, and it’s just one of those [worthwhile] ideas or concepts—to lay a brother or sister to rest with full honors in the respect that they deserve.”
The Department of Defense provides these services when requested at no cost to families, per Public Law 106-65.
Most U.S. Army garrisons have active funeral honors programs and, as a large training base, U.S. Army Fort Gregg-Adams has a longstanding program that generally draws personnel from the schools on base.
It geographically covers most of Virginia—more than 80 counties—and performs a range between about 40 to 80 funerals a month.
“This is an institution, performing military funeral honors,” said Sgt. 1st Class Geraldson Mccork, a U.S. Army Ordnance School instructor and currently the Fort Gregg-Adams funeral honors noncommissioned officer in charge.
It’s an opportunity for the Army to show families its human and caring side, he said.
“The families don’t really get to see that side,” Mccork said. “All they see is commercialized stuff, people running through the field and explosions.”
Still, while showing that the Army has its own family-like dynamic, Mccork teaches Soldiers to also maintain a professional bearing during a ceremony.
In the five-day training at the end of each month, Fort Gregg-Adams service members work together in developing skills and cohesion through hands-on practice and repetition, then they continue developing to perfection for the thirty days of their detail, Mccork said.
“We reach out to [operations], and they will reach out to the individual units to provide names for us,” Richards said. “They have to be available and tasked to us for those thirty days.”
Some service members, then, volunteer and some are tasked to perform military funeral honors.
“This duty, I think you would want to do it,” Mccork said. “In comparison to like CQ duty where you just sit and type a few things, here you’re actually engaging sometimes with the family.”
The funeral honors teams are instructed to stay for a while after performing their service in case families want to engage with them or have questions.
Military funeral honors are a unique opportunity to develop communication skills and gain experience in community building, Mccork said.
Many Soldiers coming into military funeral honors will have never performed in front of a large number of people before, and the experience can help them gain confidence and come out of their shells, Mccork said.
“It will open you up to performing in front of people, communicating more effectively and making sure that your uniform is set,” agreed Sgt. 1st Class John Longoria, a U.S. Army Quartermaster School instructor who previously acted as the Fort Gregg-Adams funeral honors NCOIC.
“You’re basically talking to everybody, and you have to socialize and know the answer to everything,” Longoria said. “Some families will off-the-wall give you a question that you want to give an answer to.”
Longoria, who volunteered to continue in the program and train Soldiers, takes a lot of pride in the funeral honors program, he said.
“Being here and seeing that there are individuals who care about this, who want to provide a phenomenal service for the families, that’s reignited my passion for the Army,” Longoria said.
One difficult skill that Longoria and other trainers work to help Soldiers perfect is the five-person firing squad that fires three times.
“It’s supposed to be in sync,” Longoria said. “You should only be able to hear one fire, and when they reload the round, it should be one rack sound.”
This and other skills are taught by practice and repetition, so that the skill becomes muscle memory and can be perfected.
“The ceremony is almost like an elegant dance—the folding of the flag and presentation, the weapons volley, the playing of “Taps” and the movements you get to make—it’s almost like poetry in motion so to speak,” Longoria said.
The impression left on mourners at the ceremony is key to the whole performance, he said.
“This is the last time families are going to see their loved one, so it will be the first thing they remember moving forward after this is completed,” Longoria said. “They could say, ‘Oh, it was a beautiful service. The Soldiers and their teammates conducted honors beautifully, their movements were flawless.’”
With such an impression achieved, mourners might see that—similar to the American flag—the fabric of the U.S. Army is woven tight, the connective tissues and stitches of its service are close and laid together precisely.
| Date Taken: | 12.12.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 12.12.2024 14:22 |
| Story ID: | 487341 |
| Location: | FORT GREGG-ADAMS, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 15 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Funeral honors program serves America with timeless tradition, by Chad Menegay, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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