This Memorial Day weekend, there is something noteworthy over at the Veterans Administration.

No, it’s not the recent news about poor service to veterans themselves. This is about long-term benefits provided to their families. There is a long-standing federal program that provides assistance to dependents who cannot support themselves. So for spouses or dependents of veterans who are required to live in a long-term care facility, the government will provide them with a monthly assistance check, and will do so for the duration of their lives. There are thousands of such recipients, including over 4,000 dependents from the Vietnam era, 2,000 from Korea, 10,000+ from World War 2, more than 2,000 from World War 1, and even a dozen dependents of veterans from the Spanish-American War.

And then there’s Irene Triplett. She is in her 80’s, and has lived for many years in a nursing home in North Carolina. Each month she receives a check for $73.13 from the government for the service her father gave to his country. Her story is unique in several ways.

First, when Irene was born in 1930, her mother was 34, but her father was 83. May-December marriages weren’t uncommon in the South during the Depression, when opportunities were scarce, but even by those standards her father was a very old man. He died when Irene was barely 8, and she remembers very little of him.

Second, Irene’s father actually began his military career fighting AGAINST the United States. His name was Mose Triplett, and he came from western North Carolina. He enlisted at age 16 and fought at places like New Bern and Fredericksburg. In 1863, Mose came down with a fever and was hospitalized in Danville VA. Meanwhile, his regiment marched north across Maryland and into Pennsylvania. So it was that Mose wasn’t at Gettysburg when his regiment was wiped out, with 734 out of a total of 800 men killed, wounded, or captured. Soon after, when he got out of the hospital, Mose deserted the Southern army and walked home to North Carolina. And then he had a change of heart. The following summer, on August 1, 1864, he re-enlisted, this time with the North; he signed his enlistment papers with an X.

Third, after the war, in 1885, Mose Triplett applied for veteran’s benefits, and was approved. He received assistance until his death in 1938. At that time, his wife and daughter had no other means of support and it was determined they were unable to support themselves. So they were placed in the county poorhouse, and their care was paid for with the government’s assistance. They lived at the poorhouse for many years, and then transferred to a nursing home in 1960. Irene paid the bills in part by mowing the grass, washing dishes, doing laundry, and raising hogs.

A lot of time has passed. Irene’s mother died in 1967. Her brother, who had run away from home as a child, died in 1996.   Irene’s generation of friends has slowly passed away. These days, she spends her time doing arts and crafts, going to religious services, drinking Coke and chewing tobacco. Time slides by. And each month, she receives that check from the Veterans Administration and endorses it the same way her father would have done, by signing it with an X.

All of which means that, over at the Veterans Administration, amongst the millions of veteran’s records and databases, there is one very noteworthy list. It used to have tens of thousands of names on it. But over the last century, this list has slowly withered, with names dropping off one by one. And now, it has just one single name remaining.

Irene Triplett: the last living veteran dependent of the Civil War.