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Majority of families opt to go to Dover for the return of fallen loved ones

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. — Susan Velloza stood on the flight line here less than 36 hours after she found out two Iraqi soldiers shot and killed her only child.

She cried as she and her husband watched six soldiers carry their son’s body off a 747 commercial jet.

She hardly remembers the red-eye flight she and her husband took from their California home to Philadelphia International Airport. Or the 77-mile drive through rural Delaware to Dover, home of the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center.

Four months later, though, she has no regrets. She had to see her son, Staff Sgt. Jake Velloza, returned to the country he died to defend.

“We needed to be there,” Velloza said. “I needed to bring my son back.”

The Vellozas might not have gotten that chance if their son had died in March instead of May. On April 5, the Defense Department enacted two new policies: one to pay the expenses for up to three relatives of a fallen service member to travel here to watch their loved one brought back home, the other to allow the media to attend “dignified transfer” ceremonies with permission from the families.

Since the policies took effect, mortuary affairs data show, the number of families traveling to Dover has increased from 5 percent to 72 percent — 141 of the 197 families who lost a service member between April 5 and Aug. 31 have made the trip.

Of those, nearly two-thirds let reporters and photographers watch the ceremony.

Defense Department officials never expected so many family members to both visit and allow the media to attend, said Col. Robert Edmondson, Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center commander.

“I knew we’d have to do it occasionally, but you could have knocked me over with a brick if you would have told me that 72 percent of families would be coming,” he said.

The experience can be too much, too soon for families, but Edmondson understands why so many come.

“How could you say no? You just learned that you lost your son or daughter,” he said.

Families always had the right to attend, but they had to get to Dover on their own — and for many, that wasn’t easy. The biggest challenges were money and time: A flight booked at the last minute is expensive, and many families couldn’t get to Dover quickly enough.

A fallen service member’s body typically returns from Iraq or Afghanistan in 24 to 48 hours because the military makes it a priority. Officials try to coordinate the plane’s arrival with the family, but the mortuary can’t delay much beyond the 48-hour window, officials said.

Now, the first two questions the family of a deceased service member is asked are: Do you want to travel to Dover, and will you allow the media to attend? If relatives choose to attend, a team goes into action, booking flights, ground transportation and lodging.

Sometimes, complications arise before the family is even contacted.

“For one casualty, the records showed the wife lived in North Carolina when in fact she was with family in Wisconsin,” said Todd Rose, chief of the mortuary affairs division. “When they figured that out, they had to contact a whole different casualty notification team. That reduced the time we have to set up travel arrangements to get them here.”

Each service handles the travel details for the families of its fallen members. All four services have built relationships with a travel agency and two hotels in Dover, said Marine Sgt. Stephen Nichols, a liaison stationed at Dover.

All but one of the 141 families that have attended since the new policy took effect made it in time to watch the ceremony. A family missed the ceremony because of an ice storm that canceled flights out of Chicago, Rose said.

A casualty assistance call officer travels with each family from their hometown. The officer drives the family from the Philadelphia airport to one of the Dover hotels. The Defense Department chose to keep the family members off base since many don’t have military ID cards, Edmondson said.

Velloza refers to her casualty assistance call officer, Maj. Desiree Saumoy, as Major Mom.

“She took care of everything,” Velloza said. “It didn’t work that way before. A lot of parents had flown out there and missed the transfer. A lot of families don’t have the money to fly out there and then miss it.”

Joe Duffy and his wife chose not to travel to Dover. The family lost their son, Army Sgt. Justin Duffy, on June 2 in Baghdad after a roadside bomb detonated next to his vehicle. However, the Duffys let reporters and photographers document their son’s return because “we were told there would be distance between Justin’s casket and the media themselves, so we didn’t have a problem with it,“ Joe Duffy said.

The Duffys and many of the families let the media witness one of their most private, most emotional moments because, said Rose, the mortuary official, they have a “sense of pride” about what their son or daughter gave for this country.

“They just lost a hero, and they wanted the rest of the world to know the sacrifices they made,” Rose said.

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