The Three Burials of Alston Anderson

Alston Anderson was buried on Saturday for the second time — or the third, if you count the slow sinking that constituted his long but unrewarded life. He was an African-American short-story writer, poet, novelist and jazz critic. He spent three years in the Army in World War II and three months of 1955 at Yaddo, the writers’ colony in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He studied philosophy at Columbia and the Sorbonne.

He had sharp talent and famous friends: Richard Wright, Terry Southern, Robert Graves. His work was chosen for anthologies of “jazz fiction” and of the best “Negro writers.” He had a story in The New Yorker and an interview with Nelson Algren in The Paris Review.

What he didn’t have were money, lasting acclaim and, evidently, family. When he died in Manhattan on July 15, 2008, at 84, no one claimed his remains. The government buried him in the potter’s field at Hart Island.

The next two-and-a-half years would have extended into forever but for a program that tracks down the remains of indigent veterans and provides them proper military burials. That was how Mr. Anderson came to join 19 other veterans buried on Saturday at Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/opinion/13thu4.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha211