This time he was not alone
Members of the Patriot Guard Riders carry the casket of veteran Ambrose Jacob as he was laid to rest during a funeral at the Gerald B.H. Solomon Saratoga National Cemetery on Wednesday. While Jacob died alone, the Putnam County Veterans Ser vices Agency worked to ensure his life and his military ser vice would be celebrated.
Ambrose Jacob died alone, but he wasn’t alone at his uuneral. Jacob was a veteran of the Vieetnam War who died in Septemmber at the age of 76. He served in the Army from 1964 to 1 1967, achieving the rank oof specialist 4th class. He was born in Yonkers and died in the Lake Carmel section of Kent, in downstate Putnam County. Those details provide only an outline of the man’s life, I realize, and I wish I could tell you much more. I wish I could detail Jacob’s full stor y, its joys and sorrows, its pain and beauty.
But at the moment, most of what I know of Jacob’s life are pieces taken from military records and relayed by Karl Rohde, director of the Putnam County Veterans Services Agency.
There was no obituary when Jacob died. There was no immediate funeral.
(Public records suggest the veteran may have gone by the name “Jacob Ambrose.” But on his discharge papers and VA records, Rohde said, he was “Ambrose Jacob.”)
It was Rohde’s agency that worked to ensure that Jacob’s life and militar y ser vice would be celebrated — that while Jacob is gone, he wouldn’t be forgotten. Rohde said it ’s his duty to make sure that all veterans in Putnam County are honored when they leave the world.
Two years ago, Rohde handled another ser vice for another indigent veteran. Only two people were there, and Rohde decided never to let that happen again.
So for Jacob, he put out the call on social media and elsewhere. He asked people to show up to honor the Army veteran. They did.
In a funeral home in Putnam County, 80 people turned out at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday to honor Jacob and see him off for the journey north to the Gerald B.H. Solomon Saratoga National Cemeter y.
When Jacob’s casket arrived about two hours later, the Patriot Guard Riders — volunteers who attend militar y funerals — were waiting with many others. Cars, pickups, motorcycles and SU Vs slowly followed Jacob’s hearse through the quiet cemetery, past the rows of carefully tended headstones, each marking the fallen.
Nearly everyone I spoke with at the funeral said the same thing. They said they were there simply because no veteran should be forgotten. Nobody who ser ved should be buried alone. There wasn’t a person in the crowd who knew Jacob when he was alive, presumably, but they were there for him on this day.
“He’s a brother in arms,” said Paul Patrick of Waterford, 63, who ser ved in the Navy. “You take the oath to ser ve your country. You take the oath to ser ve your brothers.”
As Patriot Guard Riders stood holding American f lags, the crowd filed in, sitting and standing around Jacob’s f lagdraped casket for the traditions of a military funeral. The crowd was solemn as a firing party shot off three rounds, as a bugler played taps, as the f lag was taken from the casket and carefully folded.
For Butch Hyde, a Patriot Guard Rider from Brunswick, the scene was evidence that attitudes toward the Vietnam War have shifted. It shows that people care, he said.
“When I got home from Vietnam, it was bad — nobody cared,” Hyde said, who was in the Air Force. “It was almost like you were a bad person for being there. Things have changed, though. For the better.”
Certainly, we can wish that Jacob had died surrounded by family and that loved ones had crowded his funeral. We can pray that nobody else dies alone, with nobody around to tell the story of how they lived.
Maybe someday I’ll be able to write another column telling you more about Jacob’s life, but I can’t guarantee that will happen. I don’t know if there’s a person out there who can fill in the details of his life, who can make him three-dimensional.
But I can tell you that Jacob didn’t die unremembered. I can tell you that his years ser ving his country on the far side of the world were not only recognized but honored and celebrated. I can tell you that matters.
“Soldiers go off to war together,” Patrick said. “A lot of them come home alone. None of them deser ve to be buried alone.”