In Des Moines, Iowa, Linnai Strovers, who works at a local funeral home, faced a daunting task: deciding what to do with a growing collection of unclaimed urns, some dating back decades. For Linnai, who entered the funeral profession after a deeply impersonal service for a friend, this wasn’t just an administrative problem; it was a profound personal mission. Among these long-forgotten loved ones were veterans, whose service and sacrifice deserved every ounce of respect. Our American Stories explores how Linnai took this challenge to heart, driven by a powerful commitment to ensure no life, especially a veteran’s, goes truly unremembered.
As Linnai began the meticulous process of reconnecting these unclaimed urns with families, a profound realization dawned on her. While simultaneously searching for her own biological relatives, she felt a powerful human connection to the unknown individuals in her care. This “light bulb moment” strengthened her resolve: to provide each person, particularly the veterans, a dignified burial and a final resting place. Join us to hear Linnai Strovers’ moving story about honoring every legacy, ensuring a respectful burial, and bringing peace to forgotten souls in Des Moines.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Speaker 2: When I was twenty-one, I had a very, very good friend who died, and I went to his funeral.
Speaker 3: And it was horrible.
Speaker 2: It had absolutely nothing to do with him. It wasn’t personalized at all. It wasn’t a celebration of his life, which was an amazing life. It was just very bland, and I was so frustrated that the person who was in charge of making this last chapter of his life important didn’t.
Speaker 3: I knew in that moment,
Speaker 2: that it was what I was supposed to do. There was no questioning, and I went home and sat on my couch and signed up for classes and went back to school that Monday. I was twenty-five; single mom, working two jobs; and that was terrifying. You can watch as many movies or read up as much as you want, but when you walk into that embalming suite for the first time and there is a body lying on the table, for for me, it was very humbling, because that was a person, someone’s son, and the work that I was going to do is what was going to give that family their final viewing.
Speaker 3: When I was given the project
Speaker 2: to start reconnecting these urns that had been left behind, I started with three months of bed rest. If I wasn’t able to walk—and I am not a person that sits still very easily—and I was terrified. I was worried about my mental health for being on bed rest that long. I was worried about my husband’s health for dealing with me for that long on bed rest, my kids, my family. And so I had asked my employer, “Please, please, please,
Speaker 3: give me a project to work on.”
Speaker 2: I thought it would be like stuffing envelopes for mailings, or editing obituaries from home, or just literally anything. I begged for a project. So our owner, who is Sasha, she gave me a huge yellow envelope, saying, “We have a lot of urns that are still in our care. They’ve either never been picked up, or for whatever reason, the family
Speaker 3: it just has never contacted us.”
Speaker 2: Some of these people died that had guardians, and we just weren’t sure what the next step was. And she goes, “If you can start calling some of these people and just gently remind them to come and pick up their loved one, that would be great.” I knew that we had urns. We always have quite a few urns because we’re a very large funeral home, but I didn’t know to the extent how many had been there for so long. And at this point, I’ve worked for the funeral home for about eight years and had no idea. Some of the urns that we have in our care, the person died in, like, 1995; some from the early 2000s. So people who died twenty, thirty-some years ago were still literally sitting on our shelves, and there weren’t many notes or anything about it.
Speaker 3: They just were still there. So I just started calling.
Speaker 2: And some of the times I call, and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! I thought my brother picked up Mom. We’ll be right down.” And that was a majority of the phone calls—like, just the family thought somebody else in the family had handled it. And then I got some phone calls for people that just, they’re like, “I know, but I just don’t feel comfortable having my loved ones, or not home, and I don’t know what to do with them.” And so, at that point with those people, we would walk through the option of helping locate a cemetery space and doing that. And then I started to realize we were getting a lot of people that either there was no family left; family that was left was very distant; and didn’t want those urns. At the same time that I was doing the research for finding these urns, I was also doing 23andMe and Ancestry to find my biological family. When I was born, my biological mom was a college student, and she had not told her parents that she was pregnant. She had not told anyone, and so when she went to the hospital to have me, she left right away. She did not want to tell anybody that she had had a baby. And for me, even though obviously I don’t remember that, there’s times where I grieve for her, where I’ve lost someone that I’ve never known. So as I was going through all of these urns, and looking at these names, and trying to find family,
Speaker 3: I kind of had a light bulb
Speaker 2: moment, all of a sudden. In the middle of the night, sitting in the hospital bed in my living room, it occurred to me: any one of these people could be my family. Anyone of those people could be a dad, or a mom, or a brother, or an uncle, or an aunt, or a cousin. And I felt that if I was ever able to figure out who my biological family was, and if I found out that one of those people
Speaker 3: was a family member
Speaker 2: of mine, I wanted to make sure that I had treated them with the respect that I would have if I knew it was a family member of mine. And so we came up with a concept of doing a mass burial and giving those people that were in our care for a long time, that had no one to claim them, a respectful burial with a headstone and a service. I just felt that they are my family. They have to be. So when I was going through, one of the questions when you’re visiting with a family member of the person who died is, we ask, “Was your loved one a veteran?” And of this group of about 90 urns that we were going to do a mass burial for, three of them were veterans, and I just felt that they should not be included in the mass burial. If I had an uncle or a brother or someone who had served in the military, I would want somebody to have military honors for them. It was very important for me because the honors are not only just for the veteran who served, but it’s also spouses and children served right along with the veteran. And when that flag is given to the family, it’s given to them out of respect for: you supported this veteran; you were part of them; you were part of their service. I just thought, well, we have access to Iowa Veterans Cemetery here locally, which is one of the most incredible and beautiful cemeteries ever, I think. And so I called the cemetery, Gina, who runs it over there.
Speaker 3: I said, “I have a crazy idea.”
Speaker 2: “I have three veterans that have no family. I can’t find any contact for them. What do you think if we held a little service out there for these men, and we’ll just invite the local Legions, VFW, Patriot Guard, CVMA guys. Just hopefully a few people will show up to pay respects to these guys.” And she was like, “I love it. Whatever you need, I’ll support you. That sounds perfect.” So I said, “Okay.” And I was expecting maybe 20 to 30 people to attend. We had 300. It was just one of those moments that, very surreal. Pictures, videos do not do it justice. All these people were coming out of their day to respect these three men that they never met ever, just out of respect for our country. As the years progressed, we started getting phone calls from local law enforcement if they found an urn in different places. We had an urn that was actually found in the middle of an intersection. It had gotten thrown out of a car after house was robbed. I actually just recently got a phone call last week of a veteran who was found. He had passed away. His wife had passed away. They had no children, no other family. And there was a broker, basically, who was charged from the lawyer to clean this house out, get everything going, and he sat with his flag next to him. There’s no one else left. So he was returned to us and said, “I know what you do. Please make sure this man gets buried with honors.” So they’ve kind of
Speaker 3: started coming from all over.
Speaker 2: I hope it’s something eventually we never have to do again, because that would mean that there’s nobody ever left unclaimed. But while that is still happening, and unfortunately, I think it’s going to happen more and more.
Speaker 3: It’s just something you have to go to. It’s so humbling.
Speaker 1: And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Monte Montgomery. A special thanks to Simon Conway for putting us onto this story. A terrific host at WHO in Des Moines, and a special thanks to Linnai Strovers, and what a heart this lady has. And this is the entrepreneurial part of this country in which people don’t start businesses, they just get stuff done, and they do it for the right reason. The story of Linnai Strovers and how she honors not only unclaimed urns, but unclaimed urns of veterans, here on Our American Stories.
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