Following damning reports of embarrassing mistakes and mismanagement at Arlington National Cemetery – from major burial mistakes and substandard grave digging to errors with marking graves – a scandal that attracted the ire of Congress, Arlington has committed itself to making good on their mistakes, correcting errors, and being responsive to reports.
Reports in 2010 indicating mistakes – from minor to major – may have occurred with over 64,000 burials, markers, and records.
Mine was pretty minor – and not wholly the fault of the cemetery – since conflicting military records exist for my great-uncle. That was, the birth date was wrong on his headstone. While we were at it, my family also wanted to honor his sacrifice of being wounded in combat by adding “PURPLE HEART” to the headstone.
The process was not all that complicated considering my detailed genealogical records, the improved system the Army has put in place at Arlington for “Information Quality” and handling errors, the simplicity of our request, so I’ll just provide brief notes on how we did it.
My Tips and Notes:
- An in-person visit to Arlington, then review of the cemetery records, made us aware that the birth date was wrong on my great-uncle’s headstone – and in the records of the cemetery.
- The Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) Explorer apps and website provide access to the official burial records remotely, or at the information kiosks at the cemetery. This allows you to find a grave, and the recorded information about the grave and burials in that grave.
- We visited the Army’s Information Quality Guidelines page on the Arlington National Cemetery website
- We contacted the Army through the Contact page (e-mail, in our case) on the Arlington site in the summer of 2020
- They responded with the following e-mail:
“Arlington’s internal documents support the information that is currently on the marker and in the record, and we were unable to confirm any discrepancy through external research. In order to make any changes to the marker or the record, we will require dispositive documents supporting the suggested correction.” - We provided the Quality Assurance Team with genealogical and military documentation. Since they already had access to his service records – just basic military records (including US military records that DID have the correct date). The major key was the city birth records, copies of the original baptismal record entered into the church records on the day of his baptism (which included an annotation made later concerning his marriage, helping with positive identification and matching), and a translation of the baptismal record from ecclesiastical Latin to English (as required by the cemetery).
- The translation from Latin to English was required by the Army personnel working on the case, but it was also helpful to highlight the records that we sent by e-mail, using a simple image editor.
- Although the Army described their quality-checking process to us as “rigorous,” you should check the results, letter-by-letter, line-by-line as soon as they are finished – just as you should with your initial request.
If you have any questions, or would like some pointers, feel free to get in touch with me.
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