Family Wins Fight With Coronavirus Bureaucracy To Bury An American War Hero

The ask from Phillip was simple: I will watch from the parking lot with my wife and our four children if we must, but please let my sister-in-law, her family, and my parents bury my brother.

At noon on Thursday, the Velasquez family followed Joseph’s casket out of French funeral home in Albuquerque, New Mexico on its way to meet the escort. Draped in the American flag and on the side of the volunteer biker’s chopper hearse, he’s a hard man to miss even aside from the police honor guard — and before the long line of motorcyclists waiting on the route to fall in behind the family and see their brother to rest.

Some text from the article; it's a long article so their is much more at the link:

At noon on Thursday [July 2], the Velasquez family followed Joseph’s casket out of French funeral home in Albuquerque, New Mexico on its way to meet the escort. Draped in the American flag and on the side of the volunteer biker’s chopper hearse, he’s a hard man to miss even aside from the police honor guard — and before the long line of motorcyclists waiting on the route to fall in behind the family and see their brother to rest.
The trek from their hometown to Santa Fe National Cemetery is 60 miles. Short, when compared with the struggle to let Master Sgt. Joseph Velasquez’s family finally lay him to rest.
Joseph and his slightly older brother, Phillip, were born in Germany 40 years ago, sons of Phillip Sr., a 20-year Marine who served three tours in Vietnam, and Wilma Maria, his German wife. Raised in Albuquerque on the San Felipe Pueblo reservation, the brothers played football at the Santa Fe Indian School together, followed their father into 20 years of military service together, and when their stations allowed, raised their families together.
On the night of May 22, Joseph was killed by a hit-and-run driver while he walked home on a scenic country road north of Ft. Benning, where he oversaw courses for the Military Adviser Training Program.
That night, the widowing of his wife, Darlene, and the taking of his six children’s father marked just the beginning of a nearly six-week nightmare as a family that had served 60 years and a combined 11 combat tours for their country struggle against government coronavirus confusion and paranoia, and unsympathetic bureaucracy, to lay their son, brother, husband, father, and grandfather to rest with the honors he earned, deserved, and was promised by his country.
Phillip took the lead, for weeks trying in vain to get in touch with political leaders and news stations before seeing the large, public services for George Floyd, attended by his own unresponsive congresswoman, Rep. Deb Haaland [Dem, NM-1]. He took to Facebook on the evening of June 10, frustrated and reaching out to friends and fellow soldiers, his message spreading cross-country over the following week through friends of friends of friends.
The rules were draconian. Even while Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham had opened restaurants to 50 percent indoor dining across the state, Santa Fe National Cemetery Director Cindy M. Van Bibber, Phillip says, remained unmoved and aggressive in her defense of protocol, which she said called for six-person funeral maximum. Joseph’s widow, children, and grandchild had shared a home with his parents for weeks, but to no avail.
The ask from Phillip was simple: I will watch from the parking lot with my wife and our four children if we must, but please let my sister-in-law, her family, and my parents bury my brother. And one week after the first coverage at The Federalist and dozens of phone calls and emails up and down the state, nothing had changed.

(Bold edits are mine.)

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