Bay City Civil War veteran getting second funeral 123 years after death

More than a century after his death, a local Civil War veteran is getting a second funeral service and a new grave marker. Michael Winkler died in 1889. When his great-great granddaughter, Bay City native Kathy Lutzke Mihalenko, discovered his aging tombstone in the community’s Green Ridge Cemetery, she began a process that will lead to the replacement of the fading marker along with a military funeral at the gravesite this summer. “We consider it an honor,” said Mihalenko, a retired Department of Defense employee who lives in Orlando now. “It’s a tribute to all military personnel who served.” Mihalenko said what began as a genealogical search turned into an effort to honor the long-ago-fallen war veteran again.

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