When the time arrives, every veteran should have a dignified funeral. You should have a polite and honorable send-off if you dedicate your life to serving your nation.
Unfortunately, not every veteran has friends or family at the moment of death, but that doesn’t mean they must be buried by themselves. When a member of the air force passed away, a group of kind high school seniors volunteered to carry his casket.
Ralph Lambert, a former US Air Force veteran, passed away in Louisiana on February 8 at the age of 94. Alas, he didn’t have any relatives or friends who could come to his funeral.
It seemed awful to consider that Lambert, who served his nation for more than twenty years, from 1950 to 1971, would be cremated without anybody to pay tribute to him.
Jordan Marks, a local high school baseball coach, intervened to assist the veteran when he learned about his predicament. Six of his team players, all seniors at Menard High School, were enlisted to attend the burial and carry Lambert’s coffin.
This coach used it as an opportunity to impart some important life lessons to his players off the field in addition to paying tribute to a veteran.
Marks stated that they are always happy to help out a member of the community, particularly someone who served the country. He added he tries to teach them the game of baseball as well as the game of life.
The six seniors, Ashton Veade, Cameron Kinder, Jacob Giordano, Jackson Ford, Ashton Brodnax, and Hunter Foster, carried Lambert’s flag-draped casket to the Central Louisiana Veterans Cemetery on the day of the burial.
Even though they had no prior acquaintance with the veteran, they will always cherish the honor.
Senior Jacob Giordano said that particularly with someone without family or friends, it was an honor for them to be able to go out there.
Cameron Kinder said he felt bad, and is just happy they had the chance to go out there. They all have their families and friends, yet he believes they often forget that someone else doesn’t.
Stories like these are not unusual; unfortunately, some veterans are denied the opportunity to a military-honored funeral and pass away alone. Veterans groups in the US, such as the Missing in American Project, try to find unclaimed veterans and ensure that they have honorable send-offs.
No veteran should be laid to rest alone, but fortunately this veteran wasn’t because of the generosity of six kind high school students.
I appreciate these seniors honoring this veteran during his burial. We are confident that if someone had cared for him in the end, he would have been overjoyed.
