Delaware County helped identify 15 forgotten military veterans. Friday, they were laid to rest with honors.

Joseph Richie was born in 1942 and served as a U.S. Marine in the Vietnam War. When he died in 2017 in Delaware County, no one claimed his body, and his cremated remains sat for nearly a decade in the county medical examiner’s office.

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But on Friday, Richie’s ashes were taken by motorcade to a national military cemetery about two hours away. Bagpipes played as a volunteer carried his remains. A bell tolled when his name was read. Rifles fired three ceremonial volleys to honor Richie and other veterans. A flag was presented to a volunteer as a sign of gratitude. A bugler played Taps. And although the people there did not know Richie personally, they saluted him.

Richie was one of 15 military veterans from Delaware County belatedly laid to rest during the ceremony at Indiantown Gap National Cemetery, northeast of Harrisburg. Those who attended said it was a fitting honor for people who served their country in Vietnam and elsewhere, but never received a proper funeral.

“They served their country. No one claimed them. It breaks my heart,” said James Augustin, a 74-year old Army veteran who attended the ceremony. Augustin said the ceremony righted that wrong.

Many veterans qualify for military honors at their funeral. Usually, that process begins when a family requests the honors from a veterans service organization.

What made this ceremony different is that no family members were around to do that for these people, said Kathleen Kenney, a staffer in the Delaware County Medical Examiner’s Office. So she and other volunteers took on that role instead.

“My family has a military background, and I believe that everyone who has served should be laid to rest in a dignified manner,” Kenney said.

Kenney declined to discuss specific cases but said the county takes possession of a body when it cannot locate any living family members, or when the family declines to do so.

As a result, by the time Kenney took her current role in the medical examiner’s office in 2025, she faced a backlog of names and human remains.

“And I just said, I bet you we have some veterans here,” Kenney said.

She took the list of names and biographical information to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Archives, which confirmed that 15 of the people on the list had been in the military.

Kenney reached out to the Missing In America Project, a nonprofit that coordinates such veterans’ ceremonies. The organization has helped inter more than 41,000 previously unclaimed veterans, Forrest Lingenfelter, the group’s regional coordinator, said at the ceremony.

Lingenfelter’s team put out the word to veterans organizations, and by Friday morning, more than a dozen vehicles and a pack of motorcycles were gathered at the Delaware County Medical Examiner’s Office in Media. With a police escort, the convoy traveled two hours west to the national cemetery.

During the ceremony, an Army sergeant sang the national anthem, the crowd sang “Amazing Grace,” and American Legion Chaplain Karis Hagen asked God to consecrate the veterans’ final resting place.

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Lingenfelter, a retired Army master sergeant, read a poem from a soldier’s perspective that concluded: “I can’t forget a single name. Those men are with me still. If I don’t remember them, then I ask you, who will?”

Then Lingenfelter told the crowd: “Your presence here today answers that question. We will remember those names.”

The ceremony fell silent, other than the sound of flagpole cables clacking in the wind, as members of the military honor guard folded each veteran’s American flag 13 times — one time for each original colony.

Typically, the flag would be presented to a family member as a sign of gratitude. But Friday, volunteer LuAnn Jahnke accepted one of the flags.

Jahnke, a retired Army veteran from Wallingford, Delaware County, said she did not know exactly what these veterans went through, but she could imagine.

“Vietnam veterans lived with secret wounds, hidden wounds from their service,” Jahnke said.

Her husband, retired Army Col. Jeffery Jahnke, carried a flag for one of the dead veterans. He said Vietnam veterans were not always welcomed when they returned to the U.S.

“I tell them, welcome home,” he said.

Jimbo Ernst leads a chapter of Special Forces Brotherhood, a motorcycle club made up of former military special forces members.

He said that ceremonies like this do not just pay tribute to the dead. They also bring together other veterans.

In this case, these people are from all different branches of service and age ranges. Though there is always some rivalry between groups, they are like one big family.

“It definitely helps keep the veteran community together,” Ernst said. “When push comes to shove, we’re always here for each other.”

The veterans who were interred Friday will be placed in an above-ground structure for cremated remains at the cemetery known as a columbarium, Lingenfelter said. Their names and information will be on display along with a message: “You Are Not Forgotten.” Their names are:

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