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| Veterans, Spouses Can Rest Together |
November 20, 2003 |
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| Washington, DC – After a three-year wait, Albuquerque resident Kay Brown will soon be able to place her mother’s ashes to rest in a national cemetery.
Congresswoman Heather Wilson’s legislation to help veterans’ widowed spouses was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives today, sending the final version of the measure to the President’s desk to become law. The administration supports the measure, which restores burial rights to veterans’ widowed spouses who have since remarried.
“Kay Brown and her family have had a long wait, but their efforts for their mother will help ensure burial rights for veterans and their families all over the country,” Wilson said.
Wilson’s bill, already approved by the Senate, fixes the law which prevents widowed spouses of veterans who have since remarried from being eventually laid to rest beside their spouses in national cemeteries. Kay Brown has been waiting for the problem to be corrected so that her mother’s ashes can be laid to rest after more than three years. Kay’s mother, Frances Gilkerson, had a 56-year marriage, but remarried after her husband’s death at age 84. She had been informed she would be able to be laid to rest alongside her first husband. But after her death, her family’s request was denied by the Veterans Administration.
"Prior to this action the law gave surviving veteran spouses - many of them elderly women - a sad choice: live alone in order to keep your burial right or, give up your right to be buried with your first spouse to have companionship in your sunset years," said Wilson. “America has 26 million veterans, and behind them are family members who have shared their burden, and deserve to have this right.”
Wilson’s bill was endorsed by the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (VFW) and its Ladies Auxiliary.
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