Dignity at last for vet

[babylonsister]

Dignity at last for vet
By Michael Booth
Denver Post Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 08/21/2007 09:39:00 AM MDT


What you noticed first were the things not there.

At the Fort Logan burial of a homeless veteran Monday, government and mortuary officials did their best to give the late Charles W. Bean the semblance of normalcy in death that he couldn't find in life.

But even at this sublimely beautiful lakeside chapel on a hilltop at impeccable Fort Logan National Cemetery, the disarray that must have defined Charles Bean's life was represented by a vacuum.

There were only six chairs in one row before Bean's copper-colored casket, and only two of those filled by people who knew his name. There were no family members that anyone could find. No photograph of the deceased on the program or propped atop the casket.

Lonely Service

No words spoken aloud from anyone who knew anything about Bean, who died Aug. 8, a day after his 58th birthday.

There were taps, a friendly chaplain struggling to help his small audience make a connection, and a lingering sadness that a fresh breeze can't blow away.

There was, too, though, a pervasive dignity. Naval Petty Officer Carl Altervogt carefully tucked in the edges of the flag, folded into its all-too-familiar triangle. Altervogt on bended knee presented the flag to Bean's friend Matt, as Altervogt does up to 100 times a year as a traveling honor-guard reservist.

Altervogt remarked later that, after doing this hundreds and hundreds of times for gatherings big and small, Bean's service was the only veteran's funeral where he hadn't handed the flag to a family relation.

Another somber realization lingered in the late-summer air. Dignity comes with repetition.

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