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Veterans Advisory Committee Minutes November 30, 2021 Page 6 We haven't talked with her yet and I'd like to give her a couple minutes to introduce herself. Lewis; Is Laurie official? Chair Doolittle: Yes. Laurie Soares: Hello everybody, I'm looking forward to participating and serving this committee to the best of my ability. I have a lot to learn but I'm willing to serve and I'm excited to serve Big Island. Chair Doolittle: We thank you for your interest and applying. I'd like to see more people from a lot more diversified regional locations within our county to join the committee and expand this to represent the whole county. We seem to be centered on these two locations, both Hilo and Kona and we can't, we've never had a member from Honoka'a or Waimea or anyone from the southern part. George lives down in Orchidland but that's still kind of core within Hilo. In any event, we appreciate everybody that comes to the table that brings something here that adds to veterans' lives. Thank you very much. Lewis: Where does Laurie live? Chair Doolittle: She lives next door to John. Soares: Not literally (laughter), we're in the same neighborhood. Chair Doolittle: John called me, and he said he was just coming back from Oahu, and he was trying to get a place where he can get online. Update on Training for Veterans Cemeteries Chair Doolittle: introduces the topic. Deferred to Michelle. Deputy Hiraishi: Just briefly as an update, we did have a gentleman from Missouri named Artis Parker who is the Executive Director of Field Programs for the Veterans Cemeteries at the Federal level. He brought his team here for two days. What they did and we're still waiting for that final report. But during those two days they did some observations of our staff in action as they did an in -ground casket burial as well as an urn burial. Then they did some assessments of our cemeteries and what they found is, they did some training for our staff that really opened our staff's eyes on a few of the processes that we were doing as well as working to line up the graves as well as there are a few of the graves that are unmarked, we are changing that and Moe's directive is, there will no longer be any unmarked graves at any of our veterans' cemeteries. We've begun the process of identifying those burials that aren't marked, we've ordered the temporary markers and were getting those in line. Right now, we have 200 that we've ordered and any marker that is old or unreadable we'll be replacing. They came in they did two days of training with our staff, we did quite a bit and they're still finalizing their report. But their plan is