Published: May 24, 2009 11:28 pm      

Honors at Arlington caravan passing through

Missing in America motorcyclists to be in region Tuesday

The Independent — Three American heroes will pass through Kentucky on Tuesday en route to their final resting places.

A number of local motorcyclists will be joining the Missing in America Project’s Honors at Arlington caravan as it travels Interstate 64 toward its final destination — Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va.

The group is carrying the cremated remains of Johnnie Franklin Callahan, James William Dunn and Isaiah Mays. All three will be buried at Arlington with full military honors.

The caravan left Sacramento, Calif., on Thursday. The services at Arlington will be Friday. The group will travel through Kentucky on the next-to-last leg of its journey, from Haubstadt, Ind., to Beckley, W.Va.

Area riders who wish to accompany the caravan will be gathering at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at the westbound Grayson I-64 welcome center. From there, the group will travel to Winchester to meet the caravan at a vacant shopping center just off exit 94. The local delegation will then ride with the caravan to a fuel stop in Huntington.

The caravan is scheduled to arrive in Winchester between 12:30 and 1 p.m.

The Missing in America Project is an offshoot of the Patriot Guard, a group that provides motorcycle escorts at military funerals. The MIAP seeks to locate unclaimed remains of veterans and provide them with proper military burials.

In just less than three years, the group has located the remains of more than 500 veterans and facilitated the burials of nearly 400, according to the organization’s Web site.

Last year, the MIAP oversaw the military rites and internment of Donald Rawson, a World War II veteran whose cremated remains were being kept at the Caniff Funeral Home in Westwood.

The veterans being carried cross-country on the Honors at Arlington caravan represent three different eras.

Callahan, who died in 1995, was a WWII Navy veteran who earned a Silver Star by plucking a Japanese bomb off the deck of his ship and throwing it into the ocean.

Dunn, who died in May 2008, was a combat medic who help transport many wounded to safety after his base was overrun by the enemy. He later served as a foster parent to more than 200 children.

Mays was a member of the U.S. Colored Infantry and one of founders of the Buffalo Soldiers, which was formed during the Indian Wars of the mid-1800s. He was shot during an 1889 ambush while defending a military payroll.

Mays was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. However, following his death, he was buried in a pauper’s grave in Arizona, from which his remains were exhumed by federal court order so they could be taken to Arlington.

KENNETH HART can be reached at khart@dailyindepent.com or (606) 326-2654.