Last year I spoke at a local Memorial Day observance, something I’ve been honored to do many times over the years. That day I asked if there were any World War II veterans attending and sadly, for the first time, there were none.
This year, on Veterans Day, only one percent of the 16.4 million Americans who served in that war remain. It is projected that of the 6.8 million veterans who served during the Korean War, only 200,000 will remain at the end of this decade.
Of the nine million Americans in uniform during the Vietnam War, slightly more than 5 million of us remain in 2024. In 20 years, that number will fall below one million.
So, what does all this have to do with Estate Planning? Glad you asked. My wife and I are in the midst of creating our Estate Plan. If you enter into this process, no matter how you chose to proceed—on-line or with legal professionals—you will need to organize your important documents.
Honorably discharged veterans are eligible for a number of death and burial benefits. Here is a link to some of them: https://www.benefits.va.gov/compensation/claims-special-burial.asp. If you have a veteran in your family, especially an older one, and you don’t have their records, especially their DD-214, they may not be easy to obtain when needed.
Older veterans’ records were kept by hand, and many were damaged or destroyed in a major fire. The National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis was the site of a 1973 fire that destroyed between 16 and 18 million military records, mostly those of Army and Air Force veterans.
That was our experience with the records of my father-in-law Ernie, a Korean War U.S. Army veteran. My in-laws had an Estate Plan in place. However, there was no mention of Ernie’s military service in the documents.
Several years ago, after the passing of my mother-in-law, I took it upon myself to find Ernie’s military records. My mother-in-law Connie kept extensive records in large file cabinets at their San Diego home. If you wanted the receipt for a sweater purchased at Buffum’s in 1971, she had it.
But there were no records of Ernie’s military service to be found.
The National Archives encourages people to look for military records of family members on-line at: https://www.archives.gov/veterans/military-service-record. They ask questions about the veteran, such as birthdate, military branch, dates of service, etc.
Good luck. I’ve have requested records of my family’s veterans at this site, including Ernie’s. In each case I received an email days later stating the National Archives cannot find any record of these veterans.
The email suggests downloading Standard Form 180 (SF-180), filing it out, adding copies of any documents you may have, and mailing them to the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. I’ve also done this several times only to receive a form letter a month or two later saying they have no records of these veterans.
I encourage you try these options. Maybe you’ll have better luck that I did.
My suggestion, if you run into this wall, is to be polite and persistent. Eventually I was able to speak with an actual human being, who explained about the fire that had destroyed many records and suggested a different path to find Ernie’s files.
Finally, months later, copies of some of Ernie’s records, which had been damaged but salvaged from the fire, came in the mail.
A year ago, a military honor guard sounded taps and handed our family a folded American flag as we laid Ernie to rest in San Diego next to Connie, his wife for 68 years. Having those military documents available helped make that possible.
So, this November, as we honor our veterans, it may be a good time to make sure the records of the veterans in your family are available and kept in a place where they can easily be found when needed.
