Ron Walters, political science faculty member at UMBC-Shady Grove, is a finalist for the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America medal for management excellence. Walters has been featured in a recent Washington Post article. Read an excerpt below:
As the highest-ranking official at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration, Walters knows the importance of getting it right when it comes to serving those who served the nation and making sure they are buried with dignity and honor.
Funerals, some say, are really for the living, those family and friends who are left to mourn and remember.
But Walters is keenly aware of that emotional equation of honor, loss and memory, that ethereal balance between the living and the dead.
He knows this from his work, but also from firsthand experience. His father was a veteran — a World War II Coast Guard member who died in 2009 — and part of a generation in its twilight.
Read the full article at The Washington Post
