Navy tries to deny widow an urn for dead soldier...

[rainbow4321]

Bigger urn, to be exact..there is a chance she may have gotten ashes from another solider in addition to her dead spouse. All she was wanting to do was give the ashes a final resting place:


http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/061005dnmetshumney.130c200e8.html


But the ashes from the second cremation filled an urn by themselves, she said. And Mrs. Shumney learned last week that the two sets of ashes combined wouldn't fit in a 400-cubic-inch double urn, designed to hold the remains of two people. All this has her thinking the unthinkable – that she could have the remains of another soldier as well as her husband.

Mrs. Shumney said she had hoped to combine the two sets of ashes in one urn, in keeping with her husband's religious beliefs.

When she realized they wouldn't all fit in a single military urn, she asked Navy officials to send a double urn that could hold all the remains. Mrs. Shumney said the Navy initially refused, saying enough money had been spent on items including her husband's casket, an urn for the first set of cremated remains and the second urn for the other portion.

Mr. Driver confirmed that the Navy had declined to send a double urn. However, after learning of Mrs. Shumney's complaints from The News , a Marine major contacted Dover Air Force Base and received a promise of payment for the larger urn.

[acmejack]

1. Have these people no shame?

Appalling, but sadly all too believable.

[babylonsister]

2. I can't wrap my mind around this; so where is the

family of the other soldier, and what/who did they get, if anyone? How inept are they really?

[rainbow4321]

3. We probably don't want to know how really inept....

they are...looks like they are as inept as they are cold-hearted, though.
The wife is hoping to find out if there is a family who didn't get ashes. The extra (2nd batch she rec'd) ashes weighed 80 POUNDS. I expect if she does find out the Navy screwed this up, they will be out to trash her before all is said and done.


From the article:

Mrs. Shumney said she is relying on friends' connections to have a medical examiner test bits of bone from the ashes for the presence of other soldiers' DNA.

"There's something that's just not right about this picture," she said. "I'm at the point that I'm so emotionally and mentally exhausted, but there's so much to do," she said. "I have to go through all the steps and make all these phone calls. "But it's hard, because it's my husband."

[babylonsister]

4. I didn't read the article because it requires registration, BUT-

80 POUNDS??? Having seen and held my mom's ashes, 80 lbs. is NOT just one or two people. OMG, that poor woman! Words fail me...

[comsymp]

5. Ditto that

My dad weighed about 150 when he died and his ashes don't weigh anywhere near 80Lbs, or even 20.

In fact, according to Oahu Cemetery:

Adult remains weigh 4-8 pounds, a child's remains weight about 2-3 pounds.
http://www.oahucemetery.org/cremation_faq.html

Guess we now know how the casualty report numbers are being kept so low. :sarcasm:

[Kingshakabobo]

6. Now, there's a thought that's going to fester.

"Guess we now know how the casualty report numbers are being kept so low. :sarcasm: "

[comsymp]

8. Y'know, I went back and forth on deleting that before hitting "post"

But if the story is accurate and she's holding 80Lbs of cremains, something is definitely odd... that would be, like, between 10-20 bodies (also according to www.cremation.org/faq.html ) and (if your mind is dark enough) you have to wonder how many folks could have received a 20# pack and never even questioned it.

[ohio_liberal]

9. And that's just the second batch she got

I didn't read the article. I wonder how much the first set of remains weighed. Ew.

[Streetdoc270]

12. it was 80lbs before cremation.

Robert Crouch of Sunnyvale, a friend of the Shumney family, went with Mrs. Shumney to visit her husband's body before the initial cremation in February.

"His remains were covered in his dress blues, and underneath he was completely wrapped in some type of cloth," Mr. Crouch said. "You could not tell how much of him was in the casket" because only the top portion was opened for the viewing. Mr. Crouch said he was shocked to learn later of the additional 80 pounds of remains. "It now looks like there was nothing there in the bottom half" of the casket, he said.

[Javaman]

13. Let's do the math...

80lbs of ashes, divided by (an average weight of an adults ashes) 6lbs equals 13.33 adults!!!

WTF???

[rainbow4321]

14. Urns: 1 cubic inch per "pre-cremated remains" pound

http://www.crisismagazine.com/february2004/griffin.htm


Once a body has been reduced to ashes, it doesn’t get any neater. The human body doesn’t burn into the fine powder found in urns, but into large chunks of ash. These must be broken up, raked out, and transferred to a stainless steel drum called a pulverizer. Two long, dull blades crumble the remains by spinning at high speeds. Once crushed, almost any human body fits into an urn no larger than 200 cubic inches.

http://www.funeria.com/AshesToArt2003LO.pdf

What size urn will I need?

One pound of pre-cremated remains equalling one cubic inch of ashes.
A 200 pound individual would need at least 200 cubic inch vessel.
Adult ashes average 4-8 pounds

------------------------------------

From the article:

But the ashes from the second cremation filled an urn by themselves, she said. And Mrs. Shumney learned last week that the two sets of ashes combined wouldn't fit in a 400-cubic-inch double urn, designed to hold the remains of two people.

<snip>

Lt. Shumney was 6 feet tall and weighed 185 pounds.

-------------------
His friend may have thinking that the bottom half of the soldier's
body = 80 pounds
----------------------------
<snip>
Mr. Crouch said he was shocked to learn later of the additional 80 pounds of remains. "It now looks like there was nothing there in the bottom half" of the casket, he said.
<snip>


You think there would be some sort of report on what condition the body was initially found in..or the family would have been told how much of a corpse was found--half or full. SOMEone has to know what the body looked like when it returned for the funeral and how much was in the casket.
But it looks like the "explanations" are already being suggested : Bone density, embalming fluid increasing the amount of ashes. Going by the urn guidelines, his whole body (185 lbs) should have fit into a 200 cubic inch urn--yet the entire amount of ashes (1st batch added to 2nd) needs MORE than TWICE the size in the guidelines.

[Streetdoc270]

11. use bugmenot.com

and get around the registration

[FreedomAngel82]

19. How horrible

These people really are disgusting. I feel so bad for her. :(

[HeeBGBz]

17. And why do they cremate them before they get home?

How could they have the ashes on hand to get two mixed up??

[ArkDem]

7. Urnbelievable.

[babylonsister]

10. Kickin' to inform and outrage. nt

[bobbieinok]

15. so totally bizarre.....I get tired of saying that every hour in bushco rea

reality

[rainbow4321]

16. Someone in shrub country stole this widow's FLAG!

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/061005dnmetshumneyside.130c1e915.html

Before 1st Lt. Dustin Shumney's death in Iraq on Jan. 26, his wife had promised to hang the Stars and Stripes on the front of their new Mesquite home alongside the Marine flag he had sent from Fallujah.


It always bothered me that I hadn't gotten them up," Julie Shumney said. "When Dustin passed away and my dad got here, he said, 'What do you need me to do?' "I said, 'The first thing I need you to do is to hang those flags.' And that was the first thing my dad did."

Then, while Mrs. Shumney was gone for a few hours the morning of May 15, someone stole the Marine flag. It was the hardest blow to take, Mrs. Shumney said. "It just left this horrible, horrible ache, like somebody just punched me in the stomach."

The widow has offered a $100 reward but says she won't seek prosecution. "I just want the flag back. That was just so important to my husband, and he sent it to us. The kids – it means a lot to them," she said of Conner, 3, Jordan, 12, and Mallory, 9.

[babylonsister]

18. ..........