© 2024
NPR for Northern Colorado
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Arlington Graves Of Iraq And Afghanistan Vets Digitized By Teen

April 20:  Soldiers from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Regiment, also called "The Old Guard," carry U.S. Army Corporal Justin Ross' flag-draped casket during his burial ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. Ross, 22, of Green Bay, Wis., <a href="http://militarytimes.com/valor/army-cpl-justin-d-ross/6080161/">died March 26</a> in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
Chip Somodevilla
/
Getty Images
April 20: Soldiers from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Regiment, also called "The Old Guard," carry U.S. Army Corporal Justin Ross' flag-draped casket during his burial ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. Ross, 22, of Green Bay, Wis., died March 26 in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

"Richard 'Ricky' Gilleland III — 11th-grader and Junior Future Business Leaders of America computer ace — has succeeded where the Army failed," the Los Angeles Times writes this morning. "He has created the only digitized record of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans laid to rest at Arlington [National Cemetery]. His website, , is a reverent catalog of the fallen, and one young man's response to a scandal of Army mismanagement, mismarked graves and unmarked remains that has rocked this hallowed place for two years."

"It's a tool to help remember people. They can go on and think, 'Wow, look at all these people who gave their lives just so I can walk around,' " 17-year-old Ricky tells the Times. He has focused on the cemetery's Section 60, "where about 700 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are buried, more than anywhere else in the country," the Times says.

Others have previously reported about what Ricky has done, including Washington's WUSA-TV last November. But given the scope of the problems at Arlington, including improperly marked graves and bad recordkeeping, we wanted to spread the word about PreserveAndHonor.

Ricky, by the way, plans to apply to the U.S. Naval Academy, the Times says.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.