Honoring a fellow veteran in Colma

She described Walsh, who was a family friend, as a beautiful and polite man.

“They just don’t make them like that anymore,” Pagan said.

In his final years, he told Pagan that he wanted a proper military detail at his funeral

“He said he would haunt me if we had the taped version of ‘Taps.’ He wanted the real thing,” Pagan said.

After he died at age 88, Pagan called the San Mateo County Veterans Services Office and asked if Walsh’s funeral could have a military ceremony.

George Smith, commander of the American Legion Post 105; Leo McArdle, the military chaplain; and Andrew Trapani, the commander of the Sons of American Legion and the firing detail, teamed together to give Walsh the military ceremony for which he asked. The group collaborated to get a little over 10 military personnel for Walsh’s funeral.

And it wasn’t the first or the last veteran funeral they have detailed. The group attended more than 148 funerals last year.

Smith said he does it because when he came back from Vietnam he didn’t feel welcomed home.

“We swore we would never let another veteran feel that way and this is just one of the ways that we can give back to our veteran community and make the family feel and understand that their service was really something special and it was,” Smith said.

Offering the military ceremony service gives him a purpose, he said. McArdle said some people question how he can be a part of so many funerals.

“To me, it’s not sad because we are honoring a fellow veteran and you can see it in the family’s eyes how the ceremony makes them feel and it means a lot to me,” McArdle said. “They don’t even have to say thank you to me because I can see it in their emotions.”

Trapani said that it’s a way to honor the veterans.

“All these people secure our freedom for us, so we owe them a debt and this is our way of paying back that debt,” he said.

Born Nov. 13, 1934, in New York, John Ernest Walsh Jr. was an only child. His father John Walsh Sr. worked for General Motors and eventually would move to San Francisco. Walsh told Pagan stories of how he sold newspapers in San Francisco when he was 12 years old for 5 cents. When he was 17 years old, his father signed him into the Navy, per his request.

“He always said that the military raised him, it taught him everything he knew,” Pagan said.

During his 21 years of active duty, he was in the Korean War and did five tours in Vietnam. His official naval title was gunner mate and technician. During his service, he was aboard 11 different naval ships.

After retirement, he stayed active in the community where he joined military associations like Historic Naval Ships Association, Korean War Vets Association, National Rifle Association, Swift Boat Sailors Association and American Legion Department of California.

In his 30s he married his wife Alba, the couple never had children but lived a good life together, until she died in 2006. Pagan said Walsh was a social person who was known to many as Uncle John. Every Christmas, he would dress up and play Santa Claus for his friends’ children. For hobbies, he made model ships and trains. The ships were often the ones he was stationed on, and he gave a few to Pagan, she said.

After Walsh retired from the military, he wrote an autobiography about his experiences. At the end of the book he said, ‘Old sailors never die, they just sail away.’