MEDAL OF HONOR Man's persistence yields markers for Civil War heroes

Ray Albert gets free grave markers from the government for medal recipients.
CINCINNATI (AP) -- In Spring Grove Cemetery, five Civil War Medal of Honor recipients lie in graves not marked with that distinction.
Ray Albert has spent four months trying to change that.
The 77-year-old resident of Amanda in Fairfield County told cemetery officials he would fill out the forms and e-mail them to the government to get free markers for the honored ones' graves.
And they are highly honored. Since the Revolutionary War, 41 million Americans have served in the armed forces. Of that number, only 3,459 have received the Medal of Honor. The honorees make up 0.008 percent of all the troops who have fought for the United States.
The medal is the highest honor awarded to American military personnel for gallantry in action.
Despite that, cemetery officials weren't easily persuaded to violate their rule of one marker per grave.
"They told me they could note the Medal of Honor recipients in the cemetery's records," Albert said. "That's not good enough!"
On Friday, though, the cemetery finally gave in.
Recognition
Tom Smith, Spring Grove's executive vice president, said there are new plans for those five decorated servicemen.
*Their names will make the cemetery's list of notable burials on its Web site.
*A new brochure will list what they did to earn the Medal of Honor and include a simple map showing where they're buried.
*And as for marking the graves: "We're going to do something significant, something unique, something classy," Smith said. "We're going to come up with our own marker, a bronze medallion of the Medal of Honor insignia mounted on granite with the proper inscription. And we'll place it at all our Medal of Honor recipients' graves."
Smith said the additions should take six to eight weeks. Then, visitors will be able to note the five heroes -- John Brown, John Henry Dorman, Manning Ferguson Force, George A. Loyd and John P. Murphy -- and their place of rest in the cemetery's tree-shaded groves.
WWII vets efforts
For Albert, a veteran of World War II and the Korean War, six to eight weeks is a relatively short time. He's been making people remember Ohio's 144 Medal of Honor recipients for the last 19 years.
He and his daughter, Roxanne Albert Macioci, are members of the Medal of Honor Historical Society. They catalog the grave sites of Medal of Honor recipients and make sure their award is properly noted. If it's not, Albert and Macioci tell the cemeteries they'll fill out paperwork to get a free marker from the government. All the cemetery has to do then is build a $200 concrete foundation for the marker.
Macioci said Albert can persuade cemeteries to chip in to properly honor the recipients.
"When he talks to these cemeteries," she said, "my dad always gets his way."
Albert was elated that he got his way with Spring Grove.
"Spring Grove is such a special place," he said. "So peaceful. So historic. So many people come there to take tours. Soon, when they walk the grounds, they'll be able to look down at these graves and say: 'There lies a hero.'"