Odessa Lions Club pays for veteran’s funeral

ODESSA, Texas (KOSA) - The Downtown Odessa Lions Club is stepping up to make sure a local veteran gets a proper military funeral.

The Lions Club was approached about a week ago and asked if they could help pay for a local veteran to be buried with full military honors.

Since the club’s mission is to serve the community, their answer was a resounding yes.

Specialist Strachan was an army reservist who served 11 months as field artillery, but was never called up to active duty.

Because he was never deployed, Strachan was unable to be buried at the state cemetery for veterans or honored after his death.

“Iit’s just as important because they were just ready to go. That attitude, that heart…it touched me immediately. As soon as we reached out to our club, it was a unanimous decision. There’s no reason we wouldn’t want to support someone like this who was willing to put his life on the line even if he didn’t get to do it. He still was willing to do it, so we need to honor him,” said Lions Club president Randy Unruh.

With help from the Lions Club and the American Legion of Midland, Strachan will now be buried with military honors in the veterans’ section of a midland cemetery.

The ceremony will include the honor guard, flag laying, and taps will play as he is laid to rest.

“He doesn’t have a family. He never got married. He never had kids. We get a chance to come alongside him and be able to do this for him,” said Unruh.

Unruh says he’s glad that the Lions Club was able to be involved in giving Strachan a proper military funeral.

He added that our veterans deserve respect, regardless of whether they were active duty or not.

“It’s all about who we are as a country, who we get to be as country, and the honor we get to have in this country for people who want to serve or volunteer to serve to protect us and our freedoms. It just touches my heart in ways that nothing else does when I get to talk about our military, help our military, and serve our military in whatever little ways we can do,” said Unruh.

All the funds for Strachan’s military ceremony have been raised and the funeral will be held sometime in the next two weeks.

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