By Heather Lusk
This year’s Fall Festival Parade grand marshal is a South Dakota native whose cowboy hat and love for riding make him a visually perfect match for the parade’s Wild, Wild West theme.
Bart Colvin, commander of the Zionsville American Legion Post #79, is an Army veteran who spends his spare time ensuring that deceased veterans receive military burial honors.
“The American Legion and I have been working with the Lions Club, and they just thought it was phenomenal what we do,” Colvin said.
What they do is plentiful. The American Legion organizes an annual reunion for the USS Indianapolis survivors, raises funds for families impacted by leukemia or lymphoma, sponsors several Boy and Cub Scout troops, leads a team for Habitat for Humanity, helps a veteran’s home in Lafayette, and raises funds for veterans with amputations and PTSD to get specialized treatment at a facility in Colorado.
Then Colvin goes beyond his American Legion duties to also serve as the Indiana State Coordinator for the Missing in America Project, which helps find the ashes of lost veterans left in funeral homes unclaimed by family and friends.
Once the remains have been identified and confirmed to be veterans, they are interred with military honors.
According to Colvin, funeral homes are not legally obligated to store the remains of unclaimed ashes, but many go “above and beyond” by storing hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of ashes.
Colvin estimates that there are probably 4,000 sets of unclaimed remains in the Indianapolis area, and approximates that 20 percent of them are most likely veterans.
“I just wish we could do something for all of them,” Colvin said.
In the last three years he has been present as the remains for 15 unclaimed veterans have received burial honors, including three Civil War soldiers. During his last mission in June, they buried 10 soldiers at the Marion National Cemetery.
Colvin tracked down the first five veterans, then met David Ring and Sarah Thompson with Indiana Funeral Care, which works closely with VA hospitals and veterans. Ring and Thompson had nine unclaimed veterans at their facility who received military honors in June along with a member of the Coast Guard who had passed away in a shelter earlier this year.
Together Indiana Funeral Care and Colvin are now working together, hoping to give more veterans the recognition in death that they deserve.
Colvin was recently recognized by the Zionsville Chamber of Commerce with a community service award. His wife, Dianna, has helped him raise funds for the American Legion and with the MIA Project.
“I don’t do this for the recognition,” said Colvin, “but I like to get the word out.”
He hopes to increase membership at the American Legion and raise funds to keep the doors open. With the increasing mortality of World War II veterans, “the numbers have dropped,” Colvin said.
“We’re here for the community,” Colvin said. “They just need to come in.”
Read more about the Zionsville Fall Festival here.
