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PAGE 8 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE December 24,
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Nuclear foe interred at Arlington;
Star of David to mark burial place
by Joseph Polakoff
TSI s Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON The cremated
remains of Norman David Mayer
of Miami Beach, whose efforts to
draw attention to his view against
possible nuclear warfare brought
him to lay siege to the Washington
Monument for 10 hours, are
interred in the vault at Arlington
National Cemetery.
At the request of his elder
brother, Aubrey, interment Dec.
17 was, both he and the Pentagon
said, "without honors, service or
attendance."
U S. Park Police shot and killed
Mayer, 66, after he had threatened
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to explode a thousand pounds of
dynamite at the monument's base.
His claims of having dynamite and
an accomplice later proved to be
false.
The permanent seal on the niche
in the columbarium containing the
urn with his ashes will be the
standard Veterans Administration
marble plaque bearing his name,
his military identity, and a Star of
David, the Pentagon said.
Religious symbols are placed at the
request of the deceased’s family.
"There are thousands of religious
symbols of all kinds" at Arlington,
Lieut. Col. Jamie Walton, an
Army spokesman, said. The Army
has jurisdiction over the cemetery.
The Mayer brothers both served
in the U.S. military forces in World
War II Norman joined the Navy in
1944 and served as a fireman. Two
years later he was wounded and
became disabled at the San Diego
naval base while trying to subdue a
man who had gone berserk with a
butcher knife, Aubrey said.
Aubrey, a retired warrant officer,
served 20 years in the U.S. Army as
a regular, 13 years as a reservist,
and five years as a civilian
employee.
In a telephone interview with
Aubrey, who lives in Los Alamitos,
Calif., he said the brothers were
born in El Paso, Texas, and had
“early Jewish training.” His
brother, Aubrey said, was “a non
practicing Jew*” He emphasized
that “the fact he (Norman) was
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Jewish doesn’t enter into it.”
The Jewish Community Council
of Greater Washington and the
Chesed Shel Ernes, the
Washington area’s Jewish burial
society, were arranging to bury
Mayer before his brother's arrival
in Washington. The District of
Columbia’s health authorities
released the body Dec. 14, to the
Stein Funeral Home. At the
family’s request, the funeral service
phone Mayer “to see if he would
accept any option other than
Arlington,” but he said the Army
did not pressure him.
A previous publicized instance
of the Army’s attempts to prevent
interment at Arlington occurred in
the case of Robert Thompson, a
World War II Army veteran who
after the war became New York
state chairman of the U.S.
Communist Party and was
‘At least two persons who had known him
tried to dissuade Mayer from his
actions at the monument.’
was strictly private. The name of
the rabbi was not divulged.
Nathan Lewin, president of the
Jewish Community Council, said
“it has always been a community
responsibility to carry out respect
for the deceased.” He said, “It is
the ultimate community service
because it is clear that it isn’t being
done for any reward. It is the
ultimate Jewish charity to do that
for a fellow Jew.”
In Jewish communities around
the world, an initial Jewish
communal understanding is
assumption of responsibility for
the dead.
Interment of Mayer’s remains at
Arlington was at his brother’s
request and over the objections of
Secretary of the Army John
Marsh. In a statement that was
front-paged here, Marsh said
burial at the cemetery “is not only
a privilege but an honor.” He said
the “Army further feels that those
who participate in acts
inconsistent with such honor
should not be accorded the
privilege." He pointed out that
“the Army has no choice under
existing regulations but to accede
to the family's request.” A
Pentagon spokesman later said
the Army would review the
regulations with a view toward
avoiding such situations in the
future. Aubrey Mayer said an
Army official had informed him
that the government did not want
Mayer buried at Arlington, but he
felt that his brother, as a disabled
veteran, was “entitled to that
privilege."
Walton said that the cemetery’s
superintendent, Ray Costanza, did
convicted in a U.S. court of
advocating violent overthrow of
the government. A U.S. Appeals
Court ruled the Army lacked
authority to prevent interment and
he was buried at Arlington in 1968.
Pentagon sources noted that in
Mayer’s case he would not have
been eligible for burial because of
space limitations at Arlington and
the cemetery’s rules of eligibility
for such interment, but his remains
qualified for the columbarium by
their cremation.
At least two persons who had
known him tried to dissuade
Mayer from his actions at the
monument. One was Braha
Marcus-Ofseyer, a Washington
area peace activist who said she
had met Mayer a month before the
siege. “This man cared deeply about
peace,” she told the Jewish Week
in Washington. “Obviously his
means were not rational, but this
was a very sad result.”
A survivor of Nazi concentration
camps. Charles Greenspan of
Miami Beach, took a plane to
Washington to talk with Mayer.
Greenspan, a retired hotel
manager, had hired Mayer as a
maintenance man at a hotel in
1977. Fourteen minutes after the
Eastern airlines plane had taken
off in Miami, its captain informed
Greenspan of Mayer’s demise. “1
was too late," Greenspan said.
“Mayer was a peaceful man. AH he
wanted to do was to save the
world." A Jewish communal
official said: “Terror is terror and
terror cannot be condoned. It was
still terror whether there was
dynamite or not. The terror intent
was there.”
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