Dereliction of Duty
Michael Collins | Dec 09, 2009 | Comments 7
The tombstone of a soldier who fought in World War I is emerging from the West LA VA nuclear dump.
The soldiers’ tombstones, which number at least ten, have sat in sight of thousands of kids playing soccer on adjacent MacArthur Field since at least January 9, 2008, when EnviroReporter.com first spotted them.
This reporter told U.S. Senator Feinstein and Trevor Daley, her district director, about them a week later and offered to show them the ghoulish graveyard. That was nearly two years ago. Recent phone calls to the Senator’s office have gone unreturned.
The veterans’ tombstones are lying out in the open right now while VA contractors go about their business coring the dump for contamination in the questionable places as part of the second phase of testing the dump.
The atomic tombstones take the sordid history of Brentwood’s nuclear and chemical dump to new depths. Military tombstone scandals, however, aren’t confined to the West LA VA.
In March of 2008, in a New Jersey suburb outside of Philadelphia, it was revealed that hundreds of soldiers’ tombstones had somehow found their way to a Burlington Township home seven miles away from Beverly National Cemetery where they originated.
The tombstones, some dating back to Spanish American War and weighing 230 pounds apiece, were used as landscaping and for a border around a yard along Columbus Road.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, warrant in hand, raided the property and hauled away the gravestones in a dump truck. A VA spokeswoman said that the tombstones should have been destroyed so they couldn’t be reused. Investigators offered the media a hot line number to Beverly National Cemetery to call in case the public saw any instances of tombstones being used improperly.
Early last April, CBS Channel 8 out of Las Vegas Nevada broke a story called “State Workers Use Old Vet’s Headstones for Patio.” According to the station’s “I-Team” coverage which included a disguised informant who feared for his safety and helicopter surveillance, two VA employees took 77 veterans’ tombstones from the Boulder City Veteran’s Cemetery, each weighing 130 pounds, and used them to build an outdoor patio.
Tami and Kevin Jenicke at first fudged on whether they even knew that their patio was made of tombstones, even though Kevin works at the cemetery. Tami, a VA spokeswoman, became tongue-tied when confronted by I-Team investigative reporter Jonathan Humbert. “To our knowledge, we have not done anything wrong,” Tami Jenicke said of the two tons of granite her husband brought home.
Homeless man in Los Angeles National Cemetery, background, holds a soldier's helmet aloft in this touching tableau.
The Jenicke’s were thoughtful enough to have placed the tombstones face down. As disrespectful and offensive as this all sounded, the story became more outrageous when Humbert interviewed one of Tami’s bosses, Carole Turner with the Office of Veterans Services. “It would appear that the possibility is very, very strong that they are gravestones,” said Carole Turner before adding, with a smirk, “We are taking this very seriously and we will leave no stone unturned.”
That smirk may have been wiped off Turner’s face when the Attorney General’s Office launched an investigation of the Jenicke’s several days later. In the I-Team’s follow-up segment, Turner makes a return appearance where it’s revealed that she’s the VA’s district director. Speaking in platitudes, Turner gives the impression that she thought veterans were buried under the patio.
Filed Under: Blog • Featured • VA Nuclear Dump
My mother found the article about the Jenicke’s stealing the veteran’s headstones and using them for their patio. She was horrified and showed the article to me. I felt nauseated. She and my father were both World War II U.S. Marines. It hit me especially hard because she was so ill at the time she learned of this, and she died last September. I can say that I am proud to have had her for my mother, and I buried her in a veteran’s section by my dear U.S. Marine father from WWII. I am thinking of moving her and Dad out of the veterans section and taking the headstones and moving to a totally private place so such cold-hearted activity can not insult my parents. Something is REALLY perverted, hateful, COLD HEARTED, and bitter about people who do such things. They are to be pitied and avoided.
As a veteran of WWII, I was disappointed to learn of the way in which these tombstones were treated. I wish to complement you on the excellent coverage of this story.
I have no understanding of how people can be so cold and thoughtless.
I can only hope those patio gravestones will be returned.
Thank you, Michael, for bringing this to our attention
How twisted things have become, that a young persons printed disgust over the disrespectful handling of Veteran grave stones elates Veteran advocates.
Ironically, this WLA VA prides itself on its cemetary with new sod and its treatment for the dead Veterans. What the VA does not want to realize is the best way to honor a dead Veteran is to take care of the living Veteran. Living Veteran patients at the VA, WLA, facility are like living grave stones and leasing out the Veterans Garden to a non-Veteran, non-profit entity (as recent as a month ago) is the equivelent of discarding old grave stones for new sod.
Feinstein, Waxman, Rosenthal and other electeds know about this “Land-grab” and stay silent ($$$$$$$$$).
Thank you for caring enough to expose this.
This is another great story by Michael Collins. What an insult to those soldiers to have their original markers thrown in a nuclear waste dump, of all things. Probably saved a little money. But to pave a patio and walk on them–some heads should roll on this.
The VA needs to be monitered. This is just one example of the mismanagement of our tax money.
OK, the granite marker for a grave is going to be replaced for whatever reason. However, that slab is 2 to 3 inches thick and I would think the surface could be re ground down the letterings 1/4 inch depth to erase the information and than re-used. It is called “re-cycling”.
Thank you for the reporting on this.
It’s sad to see graveyards that are not taken care of. I don’t understand why the gravestones were dumped.