A few years ago during a visit with her father, a Marine Corps veteran, in St. Louis, Army Sgt. 1st Class Yvette James asked about his burial wishes when that time came.
"I said, 'I'm your only child. What do you want me to do?' " she recalled. "He went to his room, got a folder, pulled out a copy of his DD 214, and said, 'All I want is to be buried with military honors.' "
But James, who is stationed hundreds of miles away at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, found herself plunged into an intense month-long family battle when her father, Clinton Brownlee, died Jan. 25.
James contends she was wrongly excluded from the burial planning largely due to her military service, even though under Missouri law she has the right to make those decisions as Brownlee's primary next of kin and only child.
A funeral home had allowed James' cousin to make arrangements for the service and burial — even after James had faxed the home a letter expressly denying permission for her cousin to do so.
"This was a very strange situation to have a funeral home blatantly disregard the law," said a defense official who discussed the assistance provided to James. "We contacted the funeral home to question [it] about their compliance with the statute and engaged one of our partners, the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors."
Defense officials also contacted the Missouri State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, and James filed a complaint with the board.
At press time, the funeral home had not responded to a request for comment from Military Times..
The cousin wanted to bury Brownlee at a veterans cemetery in St. Louis. But James wants to have her father cremated and buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
"I want him to be closer to me," said James, who plans to retire in Maryland. "And to me, Arlington is the ultimate cemetery. My dad was so proud of his service. That's all he talked about. He did four years, and you'd think he did 30. He loved the Marines."
But until Feb. 20, when Missouri state authorities intervened to help her get control of her father's remains, James was stuck in a nightmare of red tape. The St. Louis funeral home wouldn't talk to her; she found out through military resources and TAPS that a funeral was held for her father without her knowledge or input.
While James' situation may be unusual, disagreements about issues surrounding death, funerals and burials are not uncommon.
"Elder law attorneys are used to seeing fighting among siblings. It's often about control, and it's sometimes about past problems," said retired Col. James Pietsch, a former Army Reserve judge advocate general who is now a law professor and director of the University of Hawaii Elder Law Program.
With laws in this area varying widely among the states and service members often living far from their parents, the military may need to do a better job of educating legal assistance offices so they can help families deal with these kinds of issues, Pietsch said.
"The military does a good job of providing information to service members about what they need to do to prepare their families in the event of an untimely death," he said. "But we may extend it up to concerns about older persons in the family."
That includes educating troops about the discussions they need to have with their parents about wills, burial wishes and other related matters.
DoD's Military OneSource and TAPS tried unsuccessfully to find low-cost legal help for James, the defense official said.
She contacted some attorneys on her own, but said she couldn't afford their $1,500 to $2,500 in upfront legal fees.
Meanwhile, after learning that a burial for Brownlee had already been arranged by James' cousin, defense and TAPS officials immediately contacted the Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration, which halted the burial after determining that James indeed had the legal right to decide how her father would be buried.
"With the legal advice provided by the Office of Regional Counsel, based on applicable Missouri statutes, you are authorized to act as next-of-kin and make decisions on the disposition of your father's remains," wrote Jeff Barnes, director of the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, in a Feb. 12 letter to James.
Attorneys reviewed James' cousin's copy of Clinton Brownlee's will, but found that the will does not specifically grant her the right to control the final disposition. He said his office would notify the funeral home and James' cousin.
Still, for another eight days, James could not get control of her father's remains.
Her cousin, who asked not to be named, said Brownlee had told her "he wanted to be buried at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, with the rest of his family."
She acknowledged that she lacked a power of attorney expressly allowing her to make that decision, but said, "I had a will, which I thought was appropriate ... until [James] challenged it."
In Brownlee's last months in the hospital and then a nursing home after he had suffered a stroke last April, the cousin said she had looked after him.
"He asked me to take care of him when he couldn't take care of himself," the cousin said, contending that Brownlee and James were estranged.
That suggestion pushed James to tears. "I've been in the military for 21 years," she said. "That doesn't mean I'm estranged."
She said she visited her father after his stroke but was unable to travel back and forth to St. Louis because of her military duties and her responsibilities as a single parent.
James took military leave to travel to St. Louis to settle matters with the burial. On Feb. 20, she said, investigators with the Missouri State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors called her and asked her to meet them at the funeral home, where she was able to arrange for the transfer of her father's remains to another home, in preparation for the final journey to Arlington National Cemetery.
The board does not release information about such cases, said spokesman Chris Cline, who added that potential disciplinary action against funeral homes is decided on a case-by-case basis.
After her meeting at the funeral fuineral home, James said she was "exhausted," but also relieved that in the end she received proper recognition as her father's next-of-kin.
"I can put him to rest."
Karen has covered military families, quality of life and consumer issues for Military Times for more than 30 years, and is co-author of a chapter on media coverage of military families in the book "A Battle Plan for Supporting Military Families." She previously worked for newspapers in Guam, Norfolk, Jacksonville, Fla., and Athens, Ga.
