Shortridge joined the U.S. Navy when he was 19 years old, his mother Carol Shortridge said, and died in a scooter accident while he was stationed overseas.
Many of the men who met him during his years in the Navy said they will never forget their friend.
“Every year on Memorial Day, the guys share memories of Craig on Facebook,” said Oscar Rodriguez, who was stationed in Japan with Shortridge.
This year one of the men who had recently visited Craig Shortridge’s grave at Rose Hill Burial Park posted a photo of his headstone on Facebook and the group immediately noticed something was wrong.
“It said chief petty officer third class, which that rank is non existent — Craig was damage controlman third class, or DC 3,” Rodriguez said.
The group of more than 15 veteran sailors, who now live across the United States from Alaska to Alabama, tried to get the error corrected by Veterans Affairs.
But the U.S. government stopped replacing headstones marked with incorrect ranks last year, a VA representative said, because ranks are an optional item.
“So we finally decided, you know what, we’re going to get this done, we’re doing this ourselves,” Rodriguez said. “He’s our shipmate and we want to do something for him.”
The men contacted Carol Shortridge and asked if they could replace his marker. They then pooled together the money to buy a new one and planned a day to replace it.
They chose Aug. 13 because that’s Craig Shortridge’s birthday.
On the day he would have turned 44, a dozen of his shipmates and his family gathered by his grave at Rose Hill as a horn played “Taps” and an American flag was folded in honor of the veteran.
“Nothing could have been better,” Carol Shortridge said. “Nothing.”
It’s not uncommon for veteran’s grave markers to be inscribed incorrectly, said Shilean Mefford with the Rose Hill. Paperwork errors are what often leads to the mistakes.
This is the first time Mefford said she’s ever seen a group of fellow veterans come together to replace one of their fellow sailor’s markers.
The old metal marker was donated back to the cemetery and will be melted and recast with the name of a local homeless veteran who otherwise wouldn’t have a headstone, Mefford said.
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