What a homeowner paved his patio with will shock and disgust patriotic Americans

What a homeowner paved his patio with will shock and disgust patriotic Americans

We are all too familiar with the abuses visited on our military veterans, a third of whom have died waiting for medical appointments. But a report out of southern Missouri is so outrageous, so ghoulish, that it nearly eclipses the shabby treatment of veterans by the federal government.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has the grisly details:

A patio and staircase apparently built out of military gravestones at a property in southern Missouri has sparked a firestorm of criticism on social media.

Navy veteran Ed Harkreader of Mountain Home, Ark., posted photographs of the arrangement on Facebook last week. The post triggered scores of outraged comments and was shared thousands of times.

“This isn’t the way you should use military headstones,” Harkreader told the Post-Dispatch in a telephone interview Monday. “This is disrespectful of military veterans.”

Harkreader, 55, said he served in the Navy for 22 years. He … took pictures and tried without success to reach the property owner.

missour-headstones2

missouri-headstones

A spokesman for the National Cemetery Administration in Washington, Chris Erbe, noted that the inspector general’s office for the Department of Veterans Affairs has heard about the outrage and is investigating. Erbe is quoted as saying, “[Military headstones] are not to be used for any kind of home improvement project.” Duh, really?

Sadly, this is not the first time this has happened. Last month a former employee of the Rhode Island Veterans Memorial Cemetery pleaded guilty to federal charges for having using military grave markers to pave his carport:

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Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy has written for The Blaze, HotAir, NewsBusters, Weasel Zippers, Conservative Firing Line, RedCounty, and New York’s Daily News. He has one published novel, Hot Rain, (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), and has been a guest on Radio Vice Online with Jim Vicevich, The Alana Burke Show, Smart Life with Dr. Gina, and The George Espenlaub Show.

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