Gallatin County Sheriff's Office Chaplain Randy Jones led a graveside service sharing some of the careers of the 51 individuals laid to rest in Sunset Hills Cemetery in Bozeman.
“An electrician, a retail store owner, a secretary, a psychologist, a dude rancher and even a New York tug boat captain."
About 40 people attended the service and placed white roses on top of a sealed black vault containing the individual urns of unclaimed remains.
Bailey Krausey, funeral director at Dokken-Neslon Funeral Service, helped organize the service to give a permanent resting place to the urns in their care.
“Oftentimes, we do hold onto their urn, hoping that family will come forward. Obviously, over the past several decades, these are the people whose family haven’t came forward, and we still wanted to lay them to rest,” Krausey said.
Since publicizing a list of names recently, about a dozen remains were able to be claimed by families.
“We had one gentleman who came forward to claim his grandfather’s urn. His grandfather was born in 1883 and his grandson was 90-years-old, and we were finally able to get his urn home back with family,” Krusey said.
Other urns came from the sheriff's office, where remains found in abandoned storage units or elsewhere had been sent to the coroner's office for safe keeping.
Gallatin County Sheriff Dan Springer attended the service.
“It’s a funeral, but it's a good day because we are doing something good for the people who have passed," Springer said.
Springer said he had recently received a call from Sheriff Onstad who retired in the '80s.
“He recognized some names, and he’s like, 'I just need to tell someone about who they were.' It was just kind of neat to hear they’re not forgotten,” Springer said.
Known veterans among the group will be buried in a separate service.
