Community urged to honor Jacksonville Navy veteran’s final military farewell

A Jacksonville Navy veteran with no family will get his final military farewell Friday, and Morgan County residents are being asked to make sure Terry Kitchen is not laid to rest alone.

Morgan County Coroner Marcy Patterson said Kitchen died at a local nursing home in June 2025, and she has spent the past year verifying his background and arranging the burial. Patterson’s office was contacted after a friend reached out, setting off the search for records, service details and the military honors Kitchen earned as a decorated Navy veteran.

Kitchen’s burial is scheduled for Friday, April 25, 2026, at 10 a.m. at Camp Butler National Cemetery in Springfield. Local veterans have offered to provide taps for the service, and the VA office helped confirm details about Kitchen’s service and identity. The final ceremony will give him the military sendoff that would normally be organized by family.

Camp Butler National Cemetery carries its own history. The cemetery is in Sangamon County near Riverton, about six miles northeast of Springfield, on part of what was the second-largest military training camp in Illinois during the Civil War. It was also one of the 14 original national cemeteries authorized in 1862, which gives Kitchen’s burial a setting tied to generations of military service and remembrance.

By law, the honor guard detail for the burial of an eligible veteran must include at least two members of the armed forces. That requirement ensures a formal military farewell, but Patterson and local veterans have also worked to make sure the graveside service has something less procedural and more human: a visible community presence.

For a veteran who died without family beside him, attendance at Camp Butler will mean more than filling a row of chairs. It will mean standing witness to a life of service, offering a silent thank-you at the graveside, and making certain a Jacksonville sailor is not left to his final resting place without anyone there to honor him.