El Paso Matters – Memorial Day: Fort Bliss National Cemetery final resting place for those who served

Francisco Gonzalez Jr. and those who serve with him at Fort Bliss National Cemetery take great pride in the 82 acres that are the final resting place for almost 70,000 people, including those who died in the service of their country.

Gonzalez, the cemetery’s director since 2021, said his staff looks forward to welcoming the community to the hallowed grounds as volunteers helped set up U.S. flags prior to a Memorial Day ceremony at 9 a.m. Monday at the cemetery, 5200 Fred Wilson Ave.

The keynote speaker will be Brig. Gen. Jared D. Bordwell, deputy commanding general for support, 1st Armored Division and Fort Bliss.

About 1.3 million American service members have died in major conflicts since 1775, according to Statista. Among those interred at the post cemetery are five Medal of Honor recipients from the American Indian Wars and Korean conflict. That designation is the nation’s highest award for military valor.

Gonzalez said he values community involvement from volunteers to spectators, especially youth, because their participation shows an appreciation of service and a recognition of loss.

“It’s a time when the community can come together collectively to say, ‘thank you’ to those who sacrificed,” said the director, who served eight years on active duty with the Marines.

Memorial Day is bittersweet for Joe Torres, an 82-year-old retired broadcaster who lives in the Lower Valley. He was 17 months old when his father, Army Pfc. José Roberto Torres Sr., died in February 1945 of wounds from a mortar attack in France. While buried initially in Europe, the Army reinterred him at Fort Bliss three years later.

Torres remembered the annual bus rides with his mother to the cemetery for Memorial Day services that included patriotic music from a military band, an invocation from a minister, an address from a post official, and a three-volley salute. He said the weather was hot and the cemetery did not have many shade trees in those days.

There also would be special recognition for the Gold Star families who had lost an immediate family member during the war. He said the playing of “Taps,” a solemn, 24-note bugle call that signifies the end of the duty day or the end of a soldier’s life, always made his mother emotional.

Torres’ father, who was a cook at Southwestern General Hospital before the war, is buried on the west side of the cemetery near the graveyard’s offices.

The son stopped attending the cemetery’s Memorial Day services after he started working. However, the annual holiday always makes him think about what his father must have gone through at the end of his life. That French winter went down as one of the coldest in 50 years with deep snow and freezing rain.

“He was wounded the day before he died,” Torres said. “I believe he was thinking of my mom and (older) sister.” 

Why does Fort Bliss National Cemetery host an annual Memorial Day recognition?

Memorial Day is a federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May to acknowledge the many U.S. military service members who died for their country.

It was established May 5, 1868, as “Decoration Day” to honor Civil War combatants. Blacks and white missionaries would place flowers on the graves of Union soldiers. It was later observed on May 30 to take advantage of spring flowers.

In 1968, Congress passed a law to establish the current schedule to create a three-day weekend for federal employees. It went into effect three years later.

People may observe the holiday by flying flags at half-staff until noon and by keeping a moment of silence at 3 p.m. local time. Congress passed the National Moment of Remembrance Act in December 2000 to ask Americans to stop what they are doing at 3 p.m. for a minute to honor U.S. service members who died for their country.

The Bliss cemetery has a special program every Memorial Day. Its only other special event is National Wreaths Across America Day on the second or third Saturday in December where volunteers place holiday wreaths made of branches from balsam fir trees at the headstones of veterans. This year’s event is Dec. 19.

Who is the namesake of the Fort Bliss National Cemetery?

The Army established a garrison on the Rio Grande in 1849. It was named Fort Bliss five years later to honor Lt. Col. William Wallace Smith Bliss.

The officer was chief of staff to Gen. Zachary Taylor during the Mexican-American War (1846-48). Bliss later served as Taylor’s personal secretary during Taylor’s 16 months as U.S. president starting in March 1849. Taylor died in office of a stomach disease.

Bliss died in 1853 of yellow fever while adjutant general of the Army’s Western Division. An adjutant general serves as a senior administrative officer responsible for personnel management and readiness. He initially was interred at the Girod Street Cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana, but his remains were moved to the Fort Bliss National Cemetery on Nov. 22, 1955.

Congress authorized the Bliss national cemetery in June 1936. It was one of seven national cemeteries created from 1934 to 1939 to expand the national cemetery system to address the growing needs of additional veterans and their families.

The cemetery, located on land adjacent to the military post, was overseen by the U.S. Army Memorial Affairs Agency until 1973. Since then it has been under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration.

What makes the Fort Bliss National Cemetery unique?

This site was the first national cemetery to convert from a turf to a rock surface. The government spent $4.2 million for the project in June 2006 to reduce water usage and lower maintenance costs. The work was completed the next year. Gonzalez said he did not know the cost savings from the change.

In conjunction with the environmental goals, the grounds use native and drought-resistant vegetation and trees such as Southern live oak, Mondell Pine, Desert Willow and Honey mesquite.

The move to a rock surface generated criticism among families of the interred, but the decomposed red granite remains. Gonzalez said families also protested in the mid-1980s after the National Cemetery Administration experimented with flat headstones. He said there were enough complaints that the cemetery went back to the upright headstones.

The cemetery, which has had annual budgets from $2.5 million to $3 million for the past five years, uses Texas pink granite on its buildings to include the rostrum, the outdoor stage used for special occasions such as the Memorial Day ceremony.  

Who are among the more notable people buried at the cemetery?

The cemetery is the final resting place for five Medal of Honor recipients from the American Indian Wars in the 1890s (Cpl. Frank Bratling and Pvt. George Hooker) through the Korean conflict in the 1950s (Master Sgt. Victor Hugo Espinoza Jr., Staff Sgt. Ambrosio Guillen and Cpl. Benito Martinez).

Along with Bliss, the cemetery’s namesake, other notable deceased there are Air Force Col. John Paul Stapp, Sgt. Maj. of the Army William Wooldridge, Army Sgt. Reece “Goose” Tatum, and Airman 3rd Class Sherman Hemsley.

Stapp was a medical doctor who earned a Ph.D. in biophysics, and focused his research on aviation medicine and rocket propulsion. In 1954, he earned the title of “fastest man alive” after he rode the Sonic Wind I, a rocket-propelled sled that reached a record 632 mph in five seconds.

Wooldridge was named the first Sergeant Major of the Army in 1966. His job was to advocate for non-commissioned officers. He promoted improvements to NCO education and laid the groundwork for the establishment of the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy, which opened in 1972 at Fort Bliss. He served during World War II, Korea and Vietnam. He earned a Silver Star, the third highest combat valor award, and a Purple Heart during World War II, and a Legion of Merit in Vietnam.

Tatum, a World War II veteran, served in the Army Air Forces. He is best remembered as a member of the Harlem Globetrotters and played 11 seasons with the team after his service. He is enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. The Globetrotters retired his number 50 and included him in its Legends Ring.

Hemsley won acclaim for his role as George Jefferson in “All in the Family” and its spinoff “The Jeffersons.” He earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for this role. He served in the Air Force from 1955-59.

Additionally, the cemetery is the final resting place of 10 Buffalo Soldiers, black enlisted men whose segregated units served on the Western frontier.

The cemetery also includes a number of foreign nationals. Among them are 52 Chinese airmen who died during training exercises when China was an ally in the mid-1940s, and Hans Lindenberg, a civilian German-American rocket technician who surrendered to U.S. forces during World War II and was part of Operation Paperclip, a secret U.S. intelligence program to acquire advancements in jet engines, rocketry and guided missiles.

Additionally, the cemetery is the final resting place of 48 enemy prisoners of war – 25 Germans, 19 Italians and four Japanese – who died at internment camps in Florence, Arizona, and Roswell, New Mexico.

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