Arlington, Va. ? Joyce Johnson remembers the drums beating slowly as she walked with her girls from the Old Post Chapel, behind the horse-drawn caisson carrying the flag-draped casket of her husband.

She remembers struggling to maintain her composure as she stared at his freshly dug grave, trying not to dwell on the terrible sight in the distance — the gaping hole in the Pentagon where he had so proudly worked.

Navy Arlington Lady Paula McKinley, right, comforts the family of Electronic Warfare Second Class Petty Officer Johann Gokool, 31, including his father Ramish Gokool, of Homestead, Fla., holding the flag, at Gokool’s funeral April 23 at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va.

The three-volley salute. Taps. The chaplain handing her a perfectly folded flag. The blur of tributes.

And then a lady stepped forward, a stranger, dressed not in uniform but in a simple dark suit. She whispered a few words and pressed two cards into Johnson’s hands.

“If there is anything you need …”

Then she melted back into the crowd.

Later Johnson would think of her as a touchingly human presence in a sea of starched uniforms and salutes. She would learn that the stranger was an “Arlington lady” — one of a small band of volunteers, mainly spouses of retired military officers, who attend every funeral in Arlington National Cemetery. She would read the notes — a formal one from the Army Chief of Staff and his wife, and a personal handwritten one from the Arlington lady herself.

She would learn of their mission: to ensure no soldier is buried alone.

Johnson wasn’t alone. In fact she felt as though an entire nation was grieving with her.

But she never forgot the kindness of her Arlington Lady.

And several years later, as she wrestled with how to best to honor her husband, she dug out the lady’s card. This is something I can do, she thought, not just for him, but for every soldier.

“It doesn’t matter whether we are burying a four-star general or a private,” says Margaret Mensch, head of the Army ladies. “They all deserve to have someone say thank you at their grave.”

The Arlington ladies

Mensch is sitting at her desk in the basement of the cemetery’s administration building in the cramped office shared by ladies from the Navy, Air Force, Army and Coast Guard. The place bustles with activity — young military escorts in dress uniform arriving to accompany ladies to funerals, chaplains scribbling eulogies in their tiny office across the hall, cemetery representatives ushering mourners into private rooms upstairs.

There are approximately 30 funerals in Arlington every weekday and the ladies attend every one. All have their own reasons and stories.

There is Mensch, married to a retired Army colonel, who oversees the mammoth task of organizing the schedules for her 66 Army ladies and who says attending the funerals is the greatest honor of her life. And Doreen Huylebroeck, a 63-year-old nurse who remembers how desperately she wanted an Arlington lady beside her when her own husband, a retired Navy officer, died three years ago. Janine Moghaddam, who at 41 is one of the youngest Arlington ladies, and who felt a desperate need serve her country in some small way after Sept. 11, 2001. And Johnson herself.

She treks to the cemetery in spring when cherry blossoms burst over the rows of white stones and everything seems dusted in yellow pollen. And in the swelter of summer when the stones blaze in the heat and mourners sometimes pass out at services. Even in winter, when the wind whips through the marble pillars of the Columbarium, Johnson and the other ladies keep their vigil, clinging to the arms of their escorts as they pick their way through the mud and snow.

Always elegantly dressed, often in hats and gloves. Always standing, hand over heart, a respectful distance from the grave. Always mindful of history.

The ladies know every inch of Arlington’s 624 manicured acres, from the stones of freed slaves marked “unknown citizens” to the grave of the first soldier interred here (Private William Christman, a farmer from Pennsylvania who fought in the Civil War) to Section 60, where the men and women who lost their lives in the current wars are buried.

“So many stones, so many stories,” says Paula Mckinley, head of the Navy ladies, as she drives through the cemetery one recent spring day, stopping at a section not far from the throngs of tourists at President John F. Kennedy’s grave. “They all deserve to be remembered, and to be visited.”

‘Such an honor’

The first group of Arlington ladies were formed in 1948 after Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg and his wife, Gladys, noticed an airman being buried without any family members present, just a chaplain and honor guard. It seemed so sad, and somehow so wrong. So Gladys Vandenberg enlisted a group of officers’ wives to attend all Air Force funerals. The other branches of the armed services followed, with the exception of the Marines, who do not have a group.

The ladies insist they are not mourners. They come to honor, not to grieve. “An Arlington lady doesn’t cry,” is practically a mantra.

And yet, there are times when that is inevitable.

Linda Willey, head of the Air Force ladies, describes the pain of burying friends from the Pentagon after September 11, 2001, when shards of debris still littered the cemetery and tears flowed freely behind dark glasses.

About 145 ladies volunteer in the four branches, which all have slightly different rules. The Army ladies maintain a strict dress code — no slacks, no red, panty hose to be worn at all times. The Navy ladies introduce themselves to the families before the funeral, and follow up with personal notes about six weeks later.

All of the ladies volunteer for one day a month, sometimes attending four or five funerals in a single day. All have memories and stories: the time a family feud erupted and police had to break up the mourners; the young widow who wore a red cocktail dress because it was her husband’s favorite; the older widow who refused to get out of the car because she saw the Arlington lady standing near the grave. She assumed this was the other woman.

“You never know what to expect, and you never judge,” Willey says as she walks among the headstones and ponders her role. Willey, 63, who is married to a retired Air Force colonel, became a lady almost by accident, as a favor to a friend who kept pressing her. From her first funeral she knew that this was what she was meant to do.

“It just felt right, such an honor,” Willey says.