You may have missed the controversy about Staff Sergeant Thomas Florich who was killed along with ten other Guardsmen in a helicopter crash during a training accident near Pensacola. Arlington Cemetery officials wouldn’t approve his burial there because of the circumstances of his death. Well, the Army Secretary, John McHugh overrode their decision yesterday and approved his interment at the national cemetery. According to a press release from the Army;<\/p>\n
“As the nation’s premiere military cemetery, Arlington National Cemetery holds a unique place in the history and hearts of the United States,” said McHugh. “Because of the overwhelming number of requests for burials – and the limited space available – stringent criteria for in-ground burials were enacted to ensure that an otherwise eligible veteran or service member would not be denied their right to be buried at Arlington. ”<\/p>\n
After reviewing the Florich family’s request, McHugh agreed that there was a “compelling justification for granting this request for an exception to ANC’s interment eligibility criteria.” McHugh specifically noted that while Florich was training in his capacity as a member of the National Guard, others who were killed were considered to be on active duty and were therefore eligible for burial at Arlington without an exception to policy. That anomaly led McHugh to reverse the Army’s earlier decision.<\/p>\n
[…]<\/p>\n
McHugh has since ordered a review of the Code of Federal Regulations – which governs eligibility for interment and inurnment at Arlington – to see if changes may be needed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You may have missed the controversy about Staff Sergeant Thomas Florich who was killed along with … McHugh approves Arlington burial for Florich<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[232],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-army-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/60280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}