Team of women escorts the fallen to their graves

Associated Press

ARLINGTON, Va.

Joyce Johnson remembers the drums beating slowly as she walked with her girls from the Old Post Chapel, behind the horse-drawn caisson carrying the flag-draped coffin of her husband.

She remembers struggling to maintain her composure as she stared at his freshly dug grave, trying not to dwell on the terrible sight in the distance — the gaping hole in the Pentagon where he had so proudly worked.

The three-volley salute. Taps. The chaplain handing her a perfectly folded flag. The blur of tributes.

And then a lady stepped forward, a stranger, dressed not in uniform but in a simple, dark suit. She whispered a few words and pressed two cards into Johnson’s hands.

“If there is anything you need ...”

Then she melted back into the crowd.

Later, Johnson would think of her as a touchingly human presence in a sea of starched uniforms and salutes. She would learn that the stranger was an “Arlington lady” — one of a small band of volunteers, mainly spouses of retired military officers, who attend every funeral in Arlington National Cemetery. She would read the notes — a formal one from the Army Chief of Staff and his wife, and a personal, handwritten one from the Arlington lady herself.

She would learn of their mission: to ensure no soldier is buried alone.

Johnson wasn’t alone. In fact, she felt as though an entire nation was grieving with her.

But she never forgot the kindness of her Arlington lady.

And several years later, as she wrestled with how best to honor her husband, she dug out the lady’s card. This is something I can do, she thought, not just for him, but for every soldier.

“It doesn’t matter whether we are burying a four-star general or a private,” says Margaret Mensch, head of the Army ladies. “They all deserve to have someone say thank you at their grave.”

There are approximately 30 funerals in Arlington every weekday, and the ladies attend every one. All have their own reasons and stories.

There is Mensch, married to a retired Army colonel, who oversees the mammoth task of organizing the schedules for her 66 Army ladies and who says attending the funerals is the greatest honor of her life. And Doreen Huylebroeck, a 63-year-old nurse who remembers how desperately she wanted an Arlington lady beside her when her own husband, a retired Navy officer, died three years ago. Janine Moghaddam, who at 41 is one of the youngest Arlington ladies, and who felt a desperate need to serve her country in some small way after Sept. 11, 2001.

The first group of Arlington ladies was formed in 1948 after Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg and his wife, Gladys, noticed an airman being buried without any family members present, just a chaplain and honor guard. It seemed so sad, and somehow so wrong. So Gladys Vandenberg enlisted a group of officers’ wives to attend all Air Force funerals. The other branches of the armed services followed, with the exception of the Marines, who do not have a group.

The ladies insist they are not mourners. They come to honor, not to grieve. “An Arlington lady doesn’t cry,” is practically a mantra.