Support for the Mission
of Honor
For members of Local 600,
many of whom are U.S. military veteran, it was a harsh reality to learn that thousands
upon thousands of fellow veterans have been all but forgotten, their cremains sitting on
dark basement shelves
unclaimed for decades on end.
This is why Local 600 President
Tom Lombardi, himself a disabled veteran, has made it his
mission to try to get a little
peace and quiet for these overlooked heroes through the
To make a donation, to volunteer or for more information,
efforts of the New Jersey Mislogon to www.njsmissionofhonor.org
sion of Honor for Cremains of
or contact NJMOH Chairman Francis Carrasco at
201-906-1592 or [email protected].
American Veterans, a 501(c)19
non-profit corporation. The
mission it is to locate, identify and inter orphaned and abandoned cremains to provide honor
and respect to those who have served this country.
“Every town in every state has funeral homes and every one has cremains; some up to 300,”
stated Mission of Honor Chairman Francis Carrasco, a Vietnam Veteran and Purple Heart recipient. “We found out that a lot of these cremains are veterans’ and that upset me that they’re sitting
there in cardboard boxes or tin cans. That’s unacceptable. No veteran deserves to be sitting on the
shelf.”
The Mission of Honor (MOH) began investigating these homes and discovered that there is a
New Jersey law that states no cremains can be taken except by family members. Unfortunately,
many of these veterans outlived their relatives or were otherwise lost in the system, so the MOH
put together Bill 2613A that was signed into law in February 2009 by then-Governor Jon Corzine
allowing the Mission to be able to claim these remains.
The next step was finding a place to bury them. The Brigadier General William C. Doyle Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Wrightstown offered to bury these remains for free as long as the
MOH organization makes all the arrangements.
The first burial took place in May 2009 with two cremains from Lodi. Since then, the Mission
has taken 406 veterans off the shelves, burying around 170 and returning around 240 to secondand even third-generation family members discovered through ancestry programs.
“I’ve had many people contact me saying they can’t believe we found their great-great-grandfather,” Carrasco recalled. “One lady contacted me crying saying ‘I can’t believe you found my Pop
Pop. We’re a very close family and nobody knew where he was.’”
Besides reuniting veterans with their family and giving them resting peace, sometimes this
honorable work turns over a historical gem. Cremains from Spanish-American War veterans who
served from 1898-1904 were found sitting on a shelf in Oradell for 70 years. Another soldier who
served from 1914-1918 was discovered to have had both John “Black Jack” Pershing as his CO, and
George Patton as his second lieutenant.
Supported completely by about 300 volunteers and donations – including $500 from the NJ
State PBA – the Mission purchases mahogany urns with branch of service notated for each veteran. When cremains are turned over to family members, casket flags are also provided.
“It’s word of mouth and a matter of respect that no brother will be left behind on a foreign
country or a shelf in a funeral home,” Carrasco promised. “You get a lot of closure from this. I’ve
been doing this almost seven years and even though we’ve only covered 38 percent of the funeral
homes in New Jersey, we’re still going strong.”
Lombardi, who also oversees Local 600’s efforts to support veterans through work at VA hospitals and active troops through continued shipments of care packages overseas, emphasizes:
“There’s no reason (these veterans) should be in a box in the basement. This is something
Local 600 has donated to because it’s important.” d
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NEW JERSEY COPS
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MAY 2015