By Jane Prendergast
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Cash

In death, Gerald Cash got more recognition than he ever did in life.

He lived, homeless, on Cincinnati's streets off and on for a decade. He died homeless, a squatter in a Clifton Heights house that burned last month.

But now, at Dayton (Ohio) National Cemetery, he'll be remembered in Grave 897 as Gerald Cash, 51, an airman who served in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War.

He was buried at the cemetery free - an honor extended to all honorably discharged veterans - the day after Veterans Day.

Cash got the honor largely because of Terry Deters, a Price Hill funeral director who worked with the cemetery to confirm Cash was a veteran. That was difficult because the Social Security number Deters had for the dead man had some numbers transposed.

Someone at the cemetery figured that out and confirmed that Cash had served a short time in the Air Force in the 1970s.

Deters then donated a casket and had the body driven to Dayton for burial.

Until then, Cash's body had been in the morgue at the Hamilton County Coroner's Office as evidence in a homicide case against the man police have charged with setting the Oct. 25 fire that killed Cash and his common-law wife, Clara Young.

She was buried by her family. But no one could find any family for Cash.

Young's family said he told them he had a son, but they didn't know more.

Without the veteran designation, Cash would have been buried in an indigent grave courtesy of Hamilton County. Deters' parents raised him in the Catholic Church, where he learned about the Seven Corporal Acts of Mercy.

Among them: burying the dead.

Funeral directors do things like this all the time, Deters said, people just don't often hear about it.

"Everyone is entitled to a final disposition of dignity," he said.

E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com