Photo of Arlington Cemetery from the 2008 DCist Exposed show by cstein96

The timing of the news is inadvertently tacky. Coming only days after Veterans’ Day, U.S. Secretary of the Army John McHugh ordered an investigation into improper burials at Arlington Cemetery following a report by Salon that cemetery workers buried cremated remains in graves already in use. In its investigation, Salon revealed a negligence unbecoming servicemen and servicewomen deserving honor:

On Jan. 28, 2008, the cemetery interred [Air Force Master Sgt. Marion] Grabe’s cremated remains in the wrong plot, on top of the casket of another deceased service member. The Army then moved Grabe’s remains without requesting permission from Nolte, her next of kin — despite cemetery regulations urging efforts to obtain permission from family — but later claimed to Salon that it had notified the next of kin. The official who moved Grabe without family approval is the same official who may bear primary responsibility for the poor record keeping at the cemetery, which has already resulted in at least one “unknown” grave, as previously documented by Salon, in a cemetery that is supposed to have no new “unknowns.”

In another revelation, McHugh said that the Military District of Washington discovered an unmarked grave in Arlington Cemetery:

According to a Military District spokesman, the investigation and other evidence “strongly indicate” that a husband and wife who died years apart and should have been buried in the same gravesite were instead buried in adjacent graves. Family members declined to have the remains exhumed, which could have provided 100 percent certainty, the Army said.

The Army has promised greater transparency following its investigation into the administration of Arlington Cemetery; in fact, a management review of the facility was begun under one of McHugh’s predecessors.

There is no good excuse for administrative incompetence that mars our nation’s most sacred grave site. Mistakes that include ignoring protocols for notifying the next of kin are especially difficult to stomach. At the same time, the impossible challenge for cemeteries is to maintain a memorial that resists time’s tendency to forget. Over time, mistakes inevitably accrue. Consider the iron coffin discovered on Columbia Road in 2005, bearing the remains of one William Taylor White, whose remains were lost for 150 years without anyone being the wiser. Administrative mistakes aren’t an unforeseeable error — they are the things that graveyards have to guard against.