DENVER (KDVR) — It was a ceremony 50 years in the making.

The ashes of 14 Colorado military veterans were inurned in a columbarium at Fort Logan National Cemetery in a full military ceremony. They had been abandoned on a mortuary shelf for decades.

“I just can’t imagine how that would ever happen. So that’s kind of how the idea was sparked,” said Bill Bridges, director of the Honors Burial Project carried out by the Vietnam Veterans of America, Chapter 1071.

For the last decade, they’ve been working with Denver-area mortuaries to catalog unclaimed cremated remains, identify who among the deceased are military veterans and then give them the military burial they earned and deserve.

They worked with Stork-Morley Funeral Home for this most recent project. Of the more than 200 abandoned remains, 27 were identified as veterans.

“There’s some family that just never want them again. They just go through the process, and then they said you do what you can with them,” said Peter Morley, managing partner for Stork-Morley.

“You can’t get into the minds of the relatives of that particular veteran, and what may have been going on in their personal lives at the time when the veteran passed away. We do know that a number of these veterans did not have a surviving family member,” Bridges said.

Finding the stories of Colorado’s veterans

Once the remains are confirmed to be those of veterans, Bridges and his team work with Carol Helstosky, history department chair at the University of Denver, and Elizabeth Escobedo, an associate professor, to learn more about their military service. The instructors assign DU history students to research and write a biography for the veterans, and the information helps the Vietnam Veterans of America with obituary material for the memorial service.

All the while, volunteers from the Colorado Woodworkers’ Guild work behind the scenes to design and build custom wooden urns for each veteran, all on their own time and at their own expense.

“What we’re doing is collecting wood, taking wood donations and building urns to provide honorable burials for the veterans who have been abandoned,” said Jennifer Seim, a volunteer with the guild.

Among the veterans identified from the Stork-Morley shelf was Norman E. Mergler, who died in 1976. The volunteers and students knew very little about him and could not find much information online.

“Somehow he just disappeared off the face of the earth when he died,” said Evelyn Holden, a DU student assigned to research Mergler’s background.

“He graduated from Pueblo Central High School. He enlisted in the Navy in 1940, and he was stationed at Pearl Harbor in early 1941. He was assigned to a destroyer two days after the attack,” said Douglas Joys, Holden’s research partner.

They found scant information about Mergler’s life post-military, other than he was married. And they knew he had a daughter.

Finding a veteran’s connections in Aurora

A few days later, FOX31 was able to track her down at her home in Aurora. And Stephanie Mergler filled in the gaps in her father’s story.

“He had been playing golf and had pain in his left arm. He came home and laid down and had a heart attack and never regained consciousness,” Mergler said.

She said her mother, Madeleine, was devasted by the death, and that’s likely what kept her from claiming and spreading the ashes 48 years ago.

“My mom would get upset to talk about it,” Mergler said.

Norman Mergler’s remains have now moved to his permanent resting place — not far from where his widow is interred — all thanks to a collaboration of veterans, volunteers, students and craftspeople committed to making sure American service members get the burial they deserve.

“The legacies of these veterans are complex and deep,” Helstosky said. “They inspire us to build community, acknowledge loss and hope for everlasting peace.”