A total of 28 so-called abandoned veterans were buried Tuesday at Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale Tuesday.

Two of the veterans date back to the Spanish-American War of 1898.

John Caldarelli, head volunteer for the Missing in America Project in New York, has pledged to give unclaimed veterans the proper military burial they deserve.

"The government made a covenant with these veterans that they would be shown respect and honor and dignity," says Caldarelli. "They are the faces of our history, our freedom, who somehow got lost along the way."

Caldarelli says the project has helped bury more than 3,000 people across the country, many of them homeless and alone.

The service in Farmingdale brought closure for Richard Hahn, who never knew what happened to his father's remains after he died in 1946. Capt. Maurice Hahn served in both world wars.

"It's an incredible development. It's really a closure of many years of uncertainty and not knowing," he told News 12 Long Island.