PORTLAND, Ore. — A key player in the effort to have the long-forgotten ashes of a Civil War veteran buried in Willamette National Cemetery is unhappy with the marker planned for him.
Union soldiers from the Civil War have historically had upright headstones, with the lettering inside a shield. But the marker ordered for Peter Knapp following Friday's burial is a granite slab with no shield.
The Willamette National Cemetery, which opened in 1950, is a rarity among national graveyards because it has no upright headstones, a choice that eases maintenance and gives the place a park-like feel.
Debbie Peevyhouse, a friend of the Knapp family who did much of the legwork to get the ashes buried with full military honors, said the shield-less 12-by-24-inch flat marker is an affront.
"He deserves the headstone he earned," said Peevyhouse, who works for the California Medal of Honor Project.
A man in a Civil War union uniform is flanked by two soldiers during the military funeral for Civil War veteran Peter Knapp at Willamette National Cemetery in Portland, Ore., Friday, April 13, 2012. Knapp is the first Civil War veteran buried at Willamette National Cemetery, Oregon's largest veterans' cemetery. His ashes had been sitting on a shelf at the Portland Crematorium since 1924.(AP Photo/Don Ryan)
Knapp died in Kelso, Wash., in 1924 and was cremated in Portland. For reasons unknown, his ashes and those of his wife sat unclaimed for decades until an Oregon woman researching her husband's family tree learned of their existence. Both Knapp and his wife, Georgianna, were laid to rest in a ceremony that attracted national attention.
A spokesman for the National Cemetery Administration in Washington, D.C., said upright headstones still come with the shield because of historical precedent. Flat markers were not in vogue when most Civil War veterans were buried and do not come with the shield.
Peevyhouse said the cemetery could order a headstone, cut part of it off and lie it flat on the ground. But that's not an option, said George Allen, the director of the Portland cemetery.
"The cemetery just isn't allowed to change the format," he said.
The shield appears on the headstones of both Union soldiers and veterans of the Spanish-American War. It was standard issue at the time and has since become a means of identifying the graves of those veterans, said Bruce Frail, national graves registration officer for the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. Frail said the organization puts in many stones each year — some upright headstones with shields, and some flat markers without.
"They shouldn't be insulted by it at all," he said.
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