1800s soldiers find resting place

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SIERRA VISTA — Saying farewell to fallen comrades is a solemn occasion in the military.

Whether any of the 57 soldiers whose discovered more than two years ago in Tucson received any, or even a part of, military honors when they were first buried more than 100 years ago isn’t known.

On Saturday, those soldiers received honors at the state-operated Southern Arizona Veterans Memorial Cemetery.

The remains of the soldiers who died from the 1860s through the 1880s, along with the remains of two infants, a child and an Army civilian employee, had been exhumed from underneath roads in downtown Tucson to make way for a new Pima County and Tucson court complex. The cemetery discovered in Tucson was found had nearly 1,800 sets of remains.

Since the remains were found in what once had been a military portion of larger cemetery, it was decided the military personnel who were exhumed would be reburied with other veterans.

Through the efforts of Arizona Department of Veterans’ Service — specifically Joe Larson, the administrator of the Sierra Vista facility — the Southern Arizona Veterans Memorial Cemetery was chosen as the site for the reburials.

On Friday, the remains were turned over to the veterans department and convoyed from All Faiths Cemetery in Tucson to Sierra Vista. The remains were escorted by more than 220 motorcycle riders.

After speeches were made during a ceremony on Saturday, soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen and Coast Guardsmen, many of whom are station on Fort Huachuca or who are from Reserve units in Arizona, marched to the small flag-draped coffins.

Two members of the military went to each casket. They then knelt down and slowly removed the 35-star flags covering the 57 caskets holding the remains.

Rising as one, the 114 members of the military held the small American flags, which featured the design flown in the 1800s when most of them died.

The air was suddenly full of smoke and noise as field howitzers of the Fort Huachuca Select Honor Guard’s Salute Battery fired a salvo, which was followed by two more.

A pair of buglers from the 4th Cavalry Regiment Band, a Tucson group that performs music of the 1880s while wearing period uniforms, played echoed taps.

The soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen and Coast Guardsmen then slowly folded the flags into the traditional triangles and marched off.

Each small, brown-stained casket held the remains of the soldiers and the Army civilian. The children’s coffins were painted white. Each of those caskets had a bouquet of flowers on them.

The caskets were made by Palominas resident Joe Smith.

A crowd of nearly 800 people attended the event, and they were allowed a short time to come close to the caskets.

It was then time for the coffins to be carried, each by two members of the military, to the Victorian-style cemetery-within-a-cemetery, where cemetery staff members lowered the caskets into the ground in prepared burial areas.

The audience was quiet during the military honors portion of the ceremony, which last less than an hour, and when the caskets were carried to their final resting place.

Some in the audience wore 1880s period clothing. Men were in traditional long black coats of mourning and women wearing Kong dresses, many with hoop skirts.

As each pair from the military honor guard handed the casket they were carrying off to the cemetery staff, they then slowly marched out of the new burial area.

Members of Fort Huachuca’s B Troop, 4th U.S. Cavalry Regiment (Memorial) were off to one side of the small cemetery enclosure. In the 1800s, that unit included a band stationed at old Fort Lowell in Tucson, as well as Fort Huachuca. While at Fort Huachuca, the band’s director was the father of Fiorello LaGuardia, who went on to become the mayor of New York City. As a small boy, LaGuardia lived on the post.

With the burials completed, those watched that portion of the event slowly walked away.

Shelly Cloud was one of those people.

“I was moved and honored to have been here,” she said.

Cloud said it shows Sierra Vista knows how to honor veterans, no matter how long ago they died.

“It was special,” she added.

Herald/Review senior reporter Bill Hess can be reached at 515-4615 or bill.hess@svherald.com.