South Valley group educating families on how to honor their fallen vets at cemeteries

Arnold Baca was at San Jose de Armijo Cemetery last week putting in his young siblings’ headstones.

Maria Antoinette Baca and Anthony Joseph Baca were only infants when they died over 60 years ago.

Arnold Baca told the Journal that his mom was so devastated about losing her children within two years she had no energy to do anything more than place a small marker at their gravesite. This year, she decided it was time to put in the headstones and took part in the solemn task.

While honoring his brother and sister, Baca met Clara Peña, an advocate for helping people get the information they need to acquire headstones for their families. The two talked about gravesites that did not have headstones, including those of children and veterans.

“It amazed me that our vets that fought for us weren’t being honored,” Baca said. “I guess they were being forgotten by society.”

Baca said he wished someone told him about the benefits families of veterans have when it comes to their headstones and burying their loved ones. In 1976, his dad, Blas Baca, 44, died from a heart attack.

“We were so flipped with him dying of a heart attack that we didn’t think of having him buried in Santa Fe,” Baca said, in reference to the National Cemetery.

Peña and others are going out educating people like Baca about what can be done when burying loved ones, veterans especially.

‘Honor their service’

On Sunday morning, Peña and other members of a local group called Honoring Our Veterans congregated inside Perico’s Tacos and Burritos off Yale Boulevard to educate people about help they can get with their loved ones’ gravesites, especially veterans.

“These people served in the military and should be recognized,” she told the Journal.

Pena said Honoring Our Veterans is working with El Campo Santo and The Atrisco Company to honor vets buried without headstones in San Jose de Armijo, Santa Clara and Evangelico. Each cemetery is an extension of the Atrisco Land Grant that dates back to 1692,

Peña said the initiative “seeks to provide headstones for families who, due to family or financial circumstances, currently have only minimal markers on their graves.”

She added, “It’s kind of sad that people don’t know how to get a headstone for their loved one.”

Peña said, on Memorial Day two years ago, she got the idea to do this after seeing people place flowers on veterans’ graves without headstones.

“We said, ‘Wait a minute,’” she said. “I think we need to take this a little more seriously.”

To request a headstone for a veteran, people will need to provide a copy of the veteran’s DD-214 form along with a Form 40-1330 and death certificate, American Legion Post 99 executive officer and veterans service officer Shoshana Avrishon said.

Peña is trying to educate people on how to secure a DD-214— and other forms — and let them know what is available, she said.

“I think it’s important because there (are) a lot of forgotten veterans, and, quite frankly, there (are) a lot of people that have contacted me in the past and said they had tried to obtain gravestones for their family members and been unsuccessful,” Avrishon said.

While the process can take months, Avrishon said people should “keep at it.”

“There is going to be someone who is going to help,” she said.