Arlington Cemetery Superintendent Fired by Army

June 10, 2010 · By Jerry Castillo

Arlington NCArmy Secretary John McHugh has fired the top two officials overseeing Arlington National Cemetery over allegations of mismanagement. McHugh will announce Thursday that he is replacing Arlington National’s superintendent, John Metzler, and his deputy, Thurman Higgenbotham, who had reportedly illegally hacked into the computer files of a former Arlington employee.

In November, McHugh ordered an investigation into the allegations.

“A thorough investigation and transparency in its results can help correct whatever may be wrong and ensure America’s confidence in the operation of its most hallowed ground,” McHugh said at the time. “We will take appropriate action as the facts dictate.”

Metzler announced this week he is retiring July 2 after working for the government for 42 years, the last 19 at Arlington. He said those issues weren’t as bad as had been reported.

But Army officials told NBC News that both he and Higgenbotham are being forced to step down.

The 62-year-old’s father also was superintendent at the cemetery outside the nation’s capital.
Metzler says the high point of his career was expanding the cemetery for veterans and their families so it could continue to take new burials until 2060.

But according to NBC News, which first reported the firings, both Metzler and Higgenbotham had come under heavy fire for keeping records of the hundreds of thousands buried at Arlington National in paper files instead of creating a computer database of gravesites, NBC reported.

Officials told NBC News that over the past couple of years, some of the 300,000 graves at Arlington were improperly marked and in some cases bodies were buried in the wrong graves.

In 2008, an master sergeant was buried on top of a staff sergeant already in the grave, but the error wasn’t discovered until the widow of the first service member buried there complained to authorities that someone else’s headstone had been placed on her husband’s grave, NBC News reported.

Officials say McHugh also will announce today that he is creating a new position to oversee operations at Arlington National.

4 Responses

  1. Putman@aol.com

    June 11th, 2010 at 3:54 AM

    1

    Thank you for sharing, I found this particular story whilst looking for infomation regarding my term report, fascinating comments and fantastic points produced.

  2. wow addons gold hack

    June 12th, 2010 at 12:23 AM

    2

    Hey admin, very informative blog post! Pleasee continue this awesome work..

  3. Horacio Crofts

    June 28th, 2010 at 8:59 AM

    3

    I had difficulty viewing the website in Safari on Linux, but I still loved the post.

  4. Andy

    July 9th, 2010 at 11:27 AM

    4

    Whatever the problems at Arlington Cemetery, we still found it a truly inspirational place to visit. We even recommend it in our Washington City Guide…

    http://www.free-city-guides.com/washington-dc/arlington-cemetery/


RSS feed for comments on this post

Share your comments






«
»
Easy AdSense by Unreal