No report yet, but Army officials try to make amends

WESLACO — An incident of perceived disrespect toward the body of a McAllen soldier may change the way the Army handles funeral honors for active duty members.

U.S. Army officials explained current policies on funeral preparations and fielded questions from local veterans, officials and funeral home managers in a meeting Monday organized by Rep. Rubén Hinojosa.

The meeting was spurred by lingering unrest over the way the body of Staff Sgt. Juan Campos was returned to the Rio Grande Valley from the San Antonio hospital where he died June 1 from injuries sustained in Iraq. The body was transported partway to McAllen in a minivan before a local funeral home transferred it to a hearse, and a local veterans group organized as an honor guard.

While the military arranges for honor guards when bodies arrive by plane, its regulations do not yet require an honor guard for remains arriving at the funeral home by land.

“We touched on policy changes we’re looking to possibly enact,” said Lt. Col. Robert Amico, an officer in the Washington, D.C.-based Casualty and Mortuary Affairs Operation Center.

Among them was providing an honor guard upon arrival at a local funeral home.

“A lot of our policy changes are based on this being the right thing to do,” Amico said.

Reporters were not allowed into the meeting. Salomon Torres, Hinojosa’s district director, said the Army requested a closed meeting so participants would feel comfortable asking questions.

An Army report on the handling of Campos’ body has not yet been released, but Amico said he had spoken to the officer preparing it and reported that a glitch in communication had occurred between staff at Fort Sam Houston and the San Antonio funeral home that transported the body to McAllen.

Campos was the first of the Valley’s 25 Iraq and Afghanistan casualties to die in the United States, Amico said. Current rules dictate that if a body must be transported within 300 miles, the base has a choice of how to transport it.

“It was a lack of communication, that little gap,” said Elliott Moore, a Hidalgo County veterans' service officer. “Thank the Lord they didn’t bring that body all the way down in that van — that would have been pandemonium.”

Participants in the meeting represented “a cross-section of everyone who touches the body or the family,” said Lt. Col. Jenny Davis, an Army legislative liaison.

“I’m extremely proud that the military sent a team down here to address our concerns,” said Homer Gallegos, commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 8788 in McAllen. “I think they need to do this in other communities, too.”

Amico said he emphasized the importance of the family’s wishes in funeral organizing.

“The military is really an invited guest,” he said.

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Sara Perkins covers Starr County and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach her at (956) 683-4472. For this and more local stories, visit www.themonitor.com.