RIP Chief Francisco M. Ramirez, USN (RET)
Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Posted on 06/20/2009 11:19:51 AM PDT by SandRat
For the past month, Emma Ramirez has been sleeping with her late husband.
Each night, she tucks the urn full of his ashes into the bed they shared and talks to him in her dreams.
Saying goodbye is harder than she imagined. But when her grief wanes, the Tucson woman plans to have her mate buried at sea as a tribute to his years of Navy service. "I know he would be honored," Ramirez, 58, said of her husband, Francisco M. Ramirez, a retired chief petty officer who died on May 15 at age 99.
The Ramirezes are among a handful of Southern Arizonans each year who opt for the military funeral rites that date to the dawn of seafaring.
The U.S. Navy still provides burials at sea free of charge to hundreds of veterans each year, mainly sailors — though the service also is available to honorably discharged veterans from any branch of the military.
Such burials take place in one of several ways, depending on the wishes of the family.
If the veteran's remains are in a casket or urn, officials slide them overboard. Or they'll pour the ashes directly into the ocean. The Navy also will disperse cremains from the service's warplanes and submarines.
Last year, 700 such burials were performed nationwide, the vast majority involving cremated remains. "Some people who spend their careers at sea, they kind of feel tied to it, and that's where they want their remains placed," said Lt. Cmdr. John Daniels, a Navy spokesman.
That's how it was for Eugene Bryn of Tucson, a retired chief quartermaster on Navy nuclear submarines, who died in 2007 at age 68.
"One of the first things he mentioned when we met is that he wanted to be buried at sea," recalled Janice Dunlap, 66, Bryn's girlfriend for the three years preceding his death.
Through 20 years in the Navy during the Cold War era, Bryn "was out to sea 99 percent of the time," Dunlap said. So it seemed fitting, she said, that his ashes were poured into the ocean from a submarine like the one on which he once served.
Typically, a chaplain performs the shipboard rites under the gaze of a military honor guard. Much of the same funeral fanfare provided on land — gun salutes, the playing of taps and folding of the American flag — is incorporated into the service when conditions allow. Civilian loved ones aren't allowed onboard during the rituals, which usually take place far from land. But families are presented afterward with the flags used in the burial services.
While the funeral itself is free to families, survivors are responsible for having remains prepared for burial and transported to an appropriate Navy port.
Emma Ramirez, a native of the Philippines, plans to personally deliver her husband's ashes to the Navy at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where he was stationed at the start of World War II.
Francisco Ramirez, also a native Filipino who became a U.S. citizen, served on the USS Flusser, which was at sea near Hawaii when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The destroyer helped intercept Japanese navy vessels as they left the area.
"I always told him I would never leave him," said Emma Ramirez, Francisco's third wife, who was at his side when he died.
By taking his ashes to Pearl Harbor, she said, "I'm going to follow him all the way to the end."
Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Forty year age difference? Even if she were a child bride, he would be close to 55. And had already plowed through two wives. Francisco must have been pretty frisky!
ping
I know it’s terrible, but i remember a column in Soldier of Fortune mag a few years ago. A sailor wrote about a burial at sea. As fate had it, the cremated sailor was one of the “always in trouble” types, and the Officer who was going to dump the ashes was the worst martinet you could ever imagine.
He was supposed to drop the urn, but decided it was better to pour the ashes. As he did, a wind swirled up and the sailors ashes swarmed around the officer, dusting him completely.
As he described the horrified officer frantically slapping the ashes away, and the enlisteds trying not to explode, i laughed until i couldn’t breathe. Funny writer.
I wish that sailor the best, his wife is a good woman to honor his request even though it means she can’t be there.
Just a Sailor thing I guess... LOL
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