Captain Joan Smith Grey (Ret.) was best described by her husband, Colonel Daniel Grey (Ret.), as “Grit and Grace”. On Thursday, January 23, 2025, Joan was laid to rest in Section 55, Plot 3553 at Arlington National Cemetery.
As I indicated in last month’s newsletter, I had the amazing honor of attending the military funeral of Captain Joan Grey. Upon her death, Captain Grey’s remains were donated to science and she was now being laid to rest three years later. I was included through the grace of her surviving husband, Colonel Grey. He spoke both proudly and emotionally of his wife’s many contributions to her friends and community. Joan was a member of the first class of women at West Point. She survived a parachute accident that necessitated her retirement from what would likely have been a long and illustrious military career. She held a post-military chaplaincy and cared for everyone around her. She always said that during her life of service, she was there “for the sick, not the healthy”. She also always said that, “in case life gets too complicated, it’s very simple – love”. These quotes and descriptions seemed to best describe this amazing wife, mother, grandmother and friend, not to mention accomplished military veteran. Finally, the publishing of her Harvard Master’s Thesis just prior to her death honored her life of care for others. “Good Goodbyes: A Mortal’s Guide to Life” was written as a resource to provide guidance for our inevitable ends and was written prior to her cancer diagnosis and published prior to her own passing.
Arlington National Cemetery
Plot 3353
Many of us have seen online videos of Arlington funerals or have seen the processions pass by as we’ve visited Arlington National Cemetery. But to attend one of these funerals is quite an involved process. Significant instructions are provided regarding the procedures that must be followed in order to be admitted to Joint Base Myers-Henderson Hall, Arlington National Cemetery and the funeral itself.
The rules for attendance begin with applying for and receiving clearance after a rigorous background check. The pass is specifically designated for a 24-hour period and must be submitted no more than fourteen days ahead of attendance but no later than two days prior. One is warned that you must come in your own (or other attendee’s) vehicle (no Ubers or Lyfts) as the cemetery is 600 acres and is not walkable in most cases. Indeed, Joan’s gravesite ceremony took place at the far end of the cemetery from where we entered the cemetery from the JB Myers-Henderson Hall.
Instructions lead you the Hatfield Gate access point off Carpenter Road where a photo-ID is required, as one might expect. Attendees were required to report to the Old Post Chapel at the far end of the base forty-five minutes prior to the ceremony. No delays would be tolerated as Arlington conducts between 25 and 30 funerals every day; the honor guards and chaplains are on a tight schedule!
I was successful in applying for and receiving my online base pass, much to my relief. My sister-in-law – and many other attendees somehow found their way to some other kind of online pass that was invalid, requiring being re-cleared for access to the base. We all spent approximately 45 minutes at that Hatfield Gate access point as clearances were slowly rendered (I was glad I wasn’t the cause of any delays!). Although caught up in the clearance confusion, Colonel Grey was able to meet the strict ceremony timeline for the chapel ceremony. We only later learned that the normal access process was upended as a result of the tragedy that occurred in New Orleans only three weeks prior, when an Army veteran rammed and killed fourteen people on Bourbon Street in the French Quarters. As an aside, I can say that its a little unnerving when seeing one of the MPs – guns on hips – sprinting away from the access gate to the adjacent area where the clearances were being re-established. A sprinting MP can’t be good! Turned out he was responding to a minor fender-bender in the clearance line. Not me, thank goodness!
The funeral service was held at the Old Post Chapel at the west gate of Arlington. The chapel was filled with friends of Joan, including many of her West Point classmates, many of whom attended from across the world. The solemness of the soldiers and sentries that stood guard outside of the chapel and at it’s entrance was breathtaking. The solemn transfer of Joan’s cremains and folded flag from the chapel soldiers to the sentries that would accompany her family and take her to her final resting place was performed in silence and reverence.
Once the service ended, we all proceeded to our vehicles and entered the cemetery through the west gate located adjacent to the chapel. At that western location, we passed through Sections 83 and 84, passing the iconic Robert E. Lee mansion sitting atop Arlington Ridge that was taken by Union soldiers at the onset of the Civil War. Driving through the cemetery on the way to Joan’s gravesite, I saw tombstones of Admirals, four-star Generals, Colonels and Privates and everything in between. What were their families like, what were their favorite meals, favorite jokes, what did they do to celebrate their birthdays? Thoughts that, in my mind, reminds that these heroes are more than just names on headstones.
The procession wove down past the eastern, main gate of Arlington located adjacent to the iconic Memorial Bridge with the Lincoln Memorial across the Potomac in the distance. At that location, most fittingly, is the Military Women’s Memorial where Joan’s West Point classmates gathered three years ago to honor her at the time of her passing in 2022. Finally, we reached the the destination for the graveside ceremony. Section 55. The tent erected for the service was located at the edge of the access road as Joan’s plot, Plot 3553, was in the middle of Section 55 where little space was available for the graveside service.
The graveside service would have been familiar to any of us who have been present at military services in our own cemeteries. The flag-folding ceremony and the presentation of the flag to the grieving family was painfully familiar, although it seemed that there was an extra “crispness” to every move that the guards made. The bugler stood off in the distance among the graves in Section 55 and seven guards “presented arms” off in another direction, providing the 21-gun salute so richly deserved by Captain Gray.
In sorting through my feelings of what I had experienced, I came up with this. Without exception, each time I visit Arlington National Cemetery I have felt admiration and appreciation for those interred in those hallowed grounds. From the final resting place of John F. Kennedy, witnessing the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the monument honoring the victims of the Challenger disaster, and the many, many graves of soldiers who are less known, there exists an awe and solemnity. That said, the common thread that runs through each burial, whether at Arlington National Cemetery or one of our own Connecticut cemeteries, in one of love, loss and the legacy that each stone commemorates as a life honorably lived!
