Lawrenceville Police Department steps up for Navy vet
According to WSB-TV when Chief Petty Officer Laughlin passed his family asked the Navy to represent at his funeral;
“90-percent of what he talked about was being in the Navy. All the trips he went on and the missions, and he’d go around and brag to anybody who would listen,” son Lance Laughlin said.
[…]
The Navy would provide a two or three man team to fold the American flag and play taps, but pall bearers and an honor guard to fire a 21 gun salute are only reserved for those on active duty or recipients of the Medal of Honor.
So, the Lawrenceville, Georgia Police Department stepped into the gap for the family. According to the family, Chief Laughlin had served during three wars in the Navy. Thanks to the police department for stepping up for a family that has already sacrificed so much already.
Category: Police
BZ!
Good job, gentlemen.
Thank you !!!
No rifle volley salute? My Grandpa got one from the Navy for his funeral, and he was a duration-plus-six-months WWII vet who got out as a GM2. How the hell does a CPO, whom I would guess did at least 20 years in, not get one? Is it a budget thing?
Very cool of Lawrenceville’s lawmen to step up.
TOW, they get it wrong all the time. It’s three round volley, not 21 gun salute.
Typically, it depends on what the tasked station can provide. We restricted full details to active duty/retired/KIA’s. Standard honorable discharges got a flag folding/taps. When you have two to three coming in a week, you cant afford to send the entire shop out because work would NEVER get done. Like you said though, very good of the Lawrenceville PD to step up.
Hopefully this link posts…it covers Navy burial details…Kudos to the police but I’m a bit skeptical that the Navy wouldn’t provide….it’s not binary (a couple of sailors and a bugle or a 21 gun honors detail)…specific Navy commands have responsibilities for the cities and counties of Georgia…a CPO would have gotten something quite appropriate if this had been pushed up the chain a little harder..any local command CPO mess would be all over it…if nothing else, Navy Region SE would have gotten involved…if the specified command couldn’t deliver due to resource constraints (it could well have been as this is collateral duty stuff) another command could have been tasked…having had a command that covered 14 Georgia jurisdictions, I feel somewhat qualified to comment…sorry, typing this at an airport and am a bit rushed
http://www.public.navy.mil/bupers-npc/support/casualty/Documents/NAVPERS%2015555D.pdf
Trust me, the Navy does screw this up. When my father passed, the Navy, who had been notified, failed to show up at all, and no explanation was ever forthcoming, until we wrote the CNO. (The local VFW/American Legion saved the day on this one.) That drew a response. Got a great letter from the CNO, and arranged for a flag ceremony where three CPO’s showed up in whites to perform it. I would rather have had them there when it counted though.
Not debating that, and there were a few missed funerals on my watch due to either GPS or botched funeral home instructions (e.g. wrong date or time) and while we could never fully recover from that, we did our absolute best to do right by the family afterwards..in this case, I’m strongly suggesting the Navy could and would have arranged to properly take care of this gentlemen. Whether the detail actually arrived depends on a whole other set of variables.
That publication is all well and good back when we actually had a lot more Navy bases and Naval Reserve Centers. When I was a station keeper on the east coast near Boston, we actually had to have 2 teams for military funerals. As a Causality Assistance Calls Officer (CACO). I personally honored each and every call.
Once we were call upon to do honors for a retired Captain (O6) and we got lost (pre GPS days). By the time we got to the grave site, the coffin was already on the straps and the Chaplain was reading the rite. We assembled and did the salute, folded the flag and presented it to the widow. Everyone understood and the widow could not have been more gracious. After that episode, we instituted a better map protocol and tried not to cut the travel time to close.
BZ to the local police, good job gentlemen! That is the least we can do for those who served. May God bless you and your family at this difficult time. Prayers to all of you!
Surprised they didn’t think of the American Legion. most all posts have an honor guard, ours does 3-4 funerals a week.
Our post is small, but we do all we can for our community and especially our veterans.
My mother served in the Navy during the Korean War and separated as an AT3. When she died in 1990 and was buried in the National Cemetery at Beaufort SC, the Marines from Parris Island buried her with full military honors, pall bearers, firing party, flag detail, bugler etc.
I don’t know whether this was because my father was a retired Marine MGySgt or the fact her three children were all serving on active duty at the time or he rated it on her own. I can tell you I appreciated the hell out of it.
Seven years later when my father passed, the only difference was every Marine in the detail with the exception of the OIC was a staff NCO. That really impressed the hell out of me.
The police dept. deserves our thanks for helping out. With the number of older vets and the reduced military presence in our communities I am not surprised that staffing for funerals has taken a hit.
I’ve attended a number of funerals of older vets over the last 15 years or so. These were fathers of friends, my father who served in WWII, and my brother-in-law. The only time I have seen a three-volley salute is at a National Cemetery at the funerals of my father and brother-in-law. At my brother-in-law’s funeral at Tahoma Nat’l Cemetery the Army provided the flag detail but the rest of the team (riflemen/pallbearers and chaplain) were members of the Marine Corps League. And God bless them for providing a wonderful service for an Air Force vet.