Once homeless, veteran far from alone at funeral
MARSHALLTOWN, Ia. — The mourners stood on a breezy hillside Monday to honor a Navy veteran whose face most had never seen. There wasn't even a photograph available of Charles Lanam to adorn the small program at his funeral.
But more than 100 people gathered to see him laid to rest, inspired by a funeral director's plea not to let a veteran's death go unnoticed.
Lanam, who never married and once was homeless while living in Des Moines, was 81 when he died April 10 at the Iowa Veterans Home, leaving behind no known family members.
"Charles was one of those quiet individuals who passed through life seemingly leaving not much of a mark," Craig Nelson, an Iowa Veterans Home chaplain, told the crowd assembled outside the home. "But as with all lives, he touched the people he came in contact with: His family while he was growing up, his shipmates while he served in the Navy, those he worked with, and our staff and the residents of the veterans home … your presence is a reminder of the fact that Chuck's life mattered."
Nelson praised Lanam's service to his country in a short eulogy that evoked contemplation of society's debt to its soldiers, and for at least one observer, reflection on homelessness and other issues that afflict many American veterans.
The attendance potentially could have been zero but grew to more than 100 after Mitchell Family Funeral Home Director Marty Mitchell posted a message about Lanam's death on Facebook and urged people to come to pay their respects.
"He has no family — absolutely no family, so our staff and the chaplain from IVH will gather on a quiet hillside at IVH and put this man to rest," Mitchell wrote in a post that was shared more than 1,500 times.
It's "extremely rare" to have somebody die without any surviving family or close friends to come to the funeral, Mitchell said Monday. He's seen only three in almost 30 years in the profession.
"Our community, within a day, got brought together by Facebook, and it was for a gentleman they didn't know," said Jordan Borcherding, another director at the funeral home. "It's more than just a funeral today. It brought this community together. We got to honor somebody who honored this country."
Despite the absence of family, Lanam was far alone. Rumbling motorcycle engines echoed across the hill as more than 60 members of the Patriot Guard Riders escorted the hearse into the cemetery, and riflemen fired their traditional final salute.
Iowa Veterans Home Commandant Jodi Tymeson, flanked by home staff members, received the folded flag draped over Lanam's casket, a ritual usually reserved for family.
Pele Waddilove, a nursing program adviser at Marshalltown Community College, held back tears while thinking about what the scene could have looked like. It's too easy to imagine herself in Lanam's position, said Waddilove, herself a 62-year-old Army veteran originally from American Samoa.
"Hopefully, I would still have my children," she said. "It just really touches me how lonely that would feel, and I don't want to be in that position. That's why I came, to be one of those persons who would honor him."
The Facebook post on Wednesday prompted amateur genealogists around Marshalltown, a central Iowa town of 27,000 people, to see if they could discover any living family members who knew Lanam, Mitchell said. His mother, father and a sister had all died, he said. A woman believed to be Lanam's great half-niece was found. She lives in Colorado and recognized the Lanam name, but did not know Chuck Lanam.
What is known about him: Lanam was born in 1934 in Fairfield. He served on the USS Valley Forge aircraft carrier between 1951 and 1955 when America was involved in the Korean War. He worked as an electrician in Iowa and Tennessee, Mitchell said. He came to live at the veterans home in February 2015.
He was known as a private person who liked to keep to himself, Mitchell said.
"He was just more of a quiet guy," he said. "Living on your own that many years, that's what you're used to."
Lanam also lived part of his life as one of the thousands of military veterans across the U.S. who become homeless.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that 47,725 veterans are homeless each night. And around 1.4 million veterans are considered "at risk" of becoming homeless, confronted with shortages of affordable housing and often wrestling with mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.
Monday's funeral should cause people to "pause and reflect" on those issues that still trouble veterans, said Marshalltown resident Mick DuBois, 65, a retired Marine. DuBois served as a pallbearer and stood quietly after the funeral, looking at the grave of a different man, a close friend who also served in the Marine Corps.
"So many people came and extended their well wishes as he was put to rest," he said. "It's probably kind of unfortunate that we as a society don't adhere to this more often."
