http://miapblog.us/?p=897 A Final Farewell to Arms

DEARBORN, Mich.—For more than six decades, the remains of Sgt. First Class Carl J. Baller

hidden away.

The World War I veteran’s ashes weren’t in an unmarked grave, but in a plastic box at a funeral home in this Detroit suburb.

When the 52-year-old civil servant died in a veterans hospital here in the spring of 1947, his body was cremated. His wife held a service for him at the red-brick Howe-Peterson funeral parlor on Michigan Avenue. But for some reason, nobody picked up the deceased.

Fabrizio Costantini for The Wall Street Journal

The ashes of Sgt. Carl J. Baller have been stored more than 60 years at a Dearborn, Mich., funeral home. They are set to be buried Memorial Day.
.Sixty-three years later, Sgt. Baller and 18 other military men whose ashes were never claimed will receive a public farewell on Memorial Day, May 31. Plans call for an elaborate send-off with a horse-drawn caisson carrying the remains through this city before the playing of taps and a simple interment service at Great Lakes National Cemetery in Holly, Mich.

The ashes of a number of American service members across the country have been in limbo in mortuary basements and closets, some for more than half a century. Now a band of living veterans is leading the charge to give them a final resting place with honor. After all, they are entitled to a free military burial plot and grave marker in a national cemetery.

Since 2007, volunteers have visited 820 funeral homes and discovered the cremated remains of 698 veterans. This Missing in America Project has since interred 632 of them.

But the final journey hasn’t in all cases been smooth. Funeral-home directors in some cases are wary of helping out, citing privacy concerns and the fear of lawsuits from long-lost relatives.

Laws still need to be changed in many states to allow veterans groups to take custody of remains. Volunteers must then make a last attempt to contact next of kin, confirm service records and make arrangements with military cemeteries before the mortuary mission is done.

The man who started it all is Fred Salanti, a retired Army major and disabled Vietnam War veteran who acquired the nickname “Waterworks” because of all the tears he has shed at military funerals. He first heard about veterans’ abandoned “cremains,” as ashes are sometimes called, in 2006, while organizing military honors for poor and homeless vets.

Sgt. Carl J. Baller, above, who served in aviation repair in World War I, died in a veterans hospital in 1947.
.Unclaimed bodies can be buried in paupers’ graves, and funeral homes never keep them. But cremations are a different matter. Mr. Salanti says he doesn’t want to disrupt the relationship between family, funeral home and cemetery. “We’re not trying to buck that,” Mr. Salanti says. “We’re standing up for people who have no voice and we will speak for them.”

Still, moving unclaimed remains can be a tricky business. Mr. Salanti says he got permission from a daughter to bury her father, only to have the veteran’s son protest, unearth the remains from a military cemetery and send them back to the funeral home’s basement crypt.

The discovery of remains can be shocking news to survivors. One veteran had asked to have his ashes sprinkled by the funeral home along the banks of a favorite river. The family visited the site every year for 12 years to mark his death. But the vet’s remains actually never made it to the river and remained at the funeral home. The family’s distress turned to gratitude when the vets offered to move the ashes, Mr. Salanti says.

Sometimes, the news comes as a relief. Mr. Salanti tells the story of a woman who thought her ex-husband in anger had flushed away her grandfather’s remains. But he actually hadn’t done that, and the woman felt better when Mr. Salanti’s volunteers found the ashes at a funeral home.

One of the project’s latest finds was a mystery, until now.

According to census records, Sgt. Baller was born in 1895 in Atlantic, Iowa, the second of six children and the son of a farmer. When he registered for the draft at age 23, he was living in Detroit, working as an auto mechanic at the Timken Detroit Axle Co.

Fabrizio Costantini for The Wall Street Journal

Sgt. Baller’s cremation was recorded in Detroit.
.He reported in March 1918 to an Army aviation-repair unit in Dallas, according to military records. He became a master signal electrician in January 1919, two months before he left the service.

The 1930 census shows Sgt. Baller returned to Iowa, got married and worked as a farmer. His wife, Margaret, was a librarian. Records show the couple moved back to Detroit. His funeral-home file listed his job as an inspector for the Air Force. By 1947, Sgt. Baller was a patient at the Dearborn veterans hospital.

He died there, cause unknown. His wife sent his body to the Howe-Peterson funeral home, which has been in business since 1873.

A service was held at the funeral home, according to Sgt. Baller’s file. And there he stayed.

Each year since, around the anniversary of Sgt. Baller’s death, Howe-Peterson has sent a letter to his wife’s last known Detroit address.

A March 24, 2004, typed letter addressed to his widow reads: “Please be advised that we do not have the storage to store cremated remains for a long period of time and ask that you come to the funeral home and take the cremated remains into your care.” The letter came back to the funeral home “Addressee unknown.”

Recently, the wife of Sgt. Baller’s youngest brother, Lloyd, was found living in Iowa.

Margaret Baller, 94 years old, said she was reluctant to talk to a stranger calling about her family. But she said she remembered Sgt. Baller, adding that a photo of him as a young Iowan appeared in a library book back in Atlantic. A librarian there looked for the book and found it. The photo shows a hatless Sgt. Baller in uniform next to the long-forgotten details of his wartime service.

When Margaret Baller was told that Sgt. Baller’s remains had been on a funeral home shelf for 63 years, she exclaimed: “Oh, for goodness sakes, I can’t believe he’s still there.”

Write to Matthew Dolan at matthew.dolan@wsj.com

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CARL J BALLER