Military Honors

By Mark Loehrke
Appears in the November 2024 issue.

Local veteran works to restore the graves of the fallen

Last year Staci Boyer was performing one of her most cherished annual rituals—placing flags on the graves of veterans in Naperville Cemetery for Memorial Day—when she was struck by how deteriorated and almost invisible some of the markers had become over the years. Just steps away from a beautiful tombstone, for example, she would find a patch of dirt and some broken rocks marking the final resting place of a fallen service member. Troubled by the similar conditions of other graves and inspired by this holiday dedicated to honoring and remembering these heroes, she decided that something needed to be done.

“I just thought that these veterans deserved more, and I knew that as a community we could rectify this situation and honor our brothers and sisters in arms in the way that they truly deserve,” explains Boyer, a 12-year U.S. Navy veteran herself and commander of VFW Post 3873 in Naperville.

That day of revelation led Boyer to start the Adopt a Veteran’s Grave Project, a charitable endeavor that refurbishes the decaying gravesites of local service members. She began by identifying 28 graves in Naperville Cemetery that were in desperate need of repair. But she soon hit a roadblock: Illinois law requires the consent of family members to alter a gravesite, and tracking down the next of kin associated with these plots—some more than 100 years old—proved to be a daunting task. With the help of the Veterans Club at Naperville North High School, Boyer did manage to locate relatives of World War I veteran Edward Hiltz and replace his headstone, but she knew she needed a better plan in order to continue her mission—specifically, a new two-pronged approach.

First, she raised money to engrave a brick for each veteran’s grave that was illegible and in need of refurbishment; the brick would be installed next to the podium of their branch of service at the memorial in Naperville Cemetery. Then she approached state representative Stephanie Kifowit with an idea for a new law that would designate 100-year-old graves as historical markers, allowing organizations like the VFW and American Legion to bypass the next-of-kin barriers and take ownership of these sites for refurbishment. With sponsorship from Kifowit, House Bill 4934 passed unanimously in committee, the House, and the Senate and was signed into law by Governor JB Pritzker in August.

In addition to now moving ahead repairing those century-old (and older) graves, Boyer wants to keep the momentum going by expanding the law to make it easier to work with sites that are not quite as old but still in desperate need of repair.

Working with financial support from not only fellow veterans but plenty of civilians and corporate partners as well, she also would like to branch out to other cemeteries in the Naperville area and eventually elsewhere around the state. The goal, she says, is the same as it’s always been since that initial notion on Memorial Day—to give something back to a calling and a community that she believes has given her so much. “I firmly believe I would not have the opportunities I’ve had in my life or be the woman that I am today if these veterans had not answered the call, served our country, and given the ultimate sacrifice,” she reflects. “For them, I need to make sure I do everything I can.”

For more information on the Adopt a Veteran’s Grave project, visit motiv8nu.com/ols/categories/adopt-a-veterans-grave-project.

Photos: Staci Boyer