A Florida woman’s cross-country trip to visit her late husband’s memorial marker at Punchbowl cemetery — and what she discovered once she got there — has triggered investigations by a congressional panel and a high-ranking Department of Veterans Affairs official on why the cemetery apparently failed to contact her and possibly several hundred other families when their loved ones’ memorial markers were relocated.

Kari Cowan and her teenage son visited the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Punchbowl’s formal name, in December and discovered to their horror that Aaron Cowan’s marker was not where it originally had been placed in 2005. The pair had no idea what happened.

"I was staring at where it was supposed to be and kept looking at my son saying, ‘What the heck is going on? It should be right here,’" Cowan recalled in a recent phone interview.

The fallout from Cowan’s visit still is reverberating from here to Washington, D.C., and has heightened scrutiny of ongoing renovations at Punchbowl, one of Hawaii’s most visited and revered sites.

More than 5 million people each year visit the cemetery, where about 34,000 veterans and others are buried and where visitors are afforded spectacular views of Honolulu’s skyline.

Cowan already has received an apology from the department, which oversees all national cemeteries. And the chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, which is investigating the marker mistake, is calling on the agency to apologize to other affected families as well.

"There have been incidents in the past at Punchbowl, which are now coming to light," Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., who heads the committee, said in a statement to the Star-Advertiser. "Families of those affected deserve an apology from VA, and VA officials need to reach out immediately to other families who may have also been affected by staff error. I understand how difficult this time has been for the families affected so far."

In addition to Miller’s panel, Brad Philipps, the department executive who oversees all national cemeteries in the West, is investigating the relocation flap, including why Punchbowl personnel in December repeatedly told Cowan her husband’s marker had not been relocated.

As recently as a week and a half ago, Gene Castagnetti, Punchbowl’s director, told the Star-Advertiser that Cowan was mistaken.

Punchbowl admitted its error after the Star-Advertiser began raising questions, Cowan provided photos from 2006 showing her husband’s marker in its original location and her congressman, also on the House committee, filed a formal inquiry at her request.

Philipps, director of the VA’s Memorial Service Network, said his investigation also will include how Cowan was treated by the cemetery staff. She alleged that she was treated rudely, insulted and yelled at, which upset her son.

While Philipps said he couldn’t comment on those allegations, he admitted the cemetery mishandled her case.

"I cannot express enough my deepest apologies for her experience," Philipps said. "We will do what we can to make it right."

Philipps acknowledged that other families besides the Cowans apparently were not notified when their loved ones’ memorial markers in Punchbowl’s section MB were relocated, even though department policy required such notification.

Without the notifications, families who subsequently visited the sites may not have been able to initially locate their relative’s marker — an experience Cowan described as traumatic. Her husband’s marker had been moved from one side of the section to the other and into an adjacent row.

The MB section is reserved for veterans whose remains were not recovered or were buried at sea, donated to science or cremated and scattered. Cowan’s husband, an Army chief warrant officer 3, died at age 37 in 2005 from injuries suffered in a helicopter crash in Korea. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea off Pearl Harbor.

Recognizing that Punchbowl was fast running out of memorial space, the MB markers were shifted to smaller plots within the section to create room for an additional 300, enabling the cemetery to accommodate more veterans and their families, according to Philipps. At the time Cowan’s marker was originally placed, the section had more than 300.

Punchbowl is dealing with the marker fallout while it is overseeing a major turf makeover that itself is generating scores of complaints, mostly about missing gravesite vases.

The marker mistake also comes amid a backdrop of controversy over missteps at other national cemeteries.

In recent months, nearly 250 graves were discovered incorrectly marked or unmarked, in some cases for years, at several cemeteries, and a handful of people were found to have been buried in the wrong places. Arlington National Cemetery was among those where problems were discovered.

The VA has vowed to audit each of its 131 cemeteries, check all 3 million graves and fix any errors. The Punchbowl audit has not been done yet.

While cemetery officials say the MB relocations were not done as part of the current renovations, which began in 2009, the high-level attention that matter is commanding also is extending to the ongoing work.

Miller said his committee is tracking the Punchbowl renovation and the progress of the ongoing audits systemwide.

"I have been to Punchbowl and know first-hand that is a very special resting place for our veterans," he said.

The renovation work eventually will replace the topsoil and grass encompassing all 68 acres where the 34,000 burial sites are located, with the goal to eliminate the uneven surfaces that have resulted over the years as some ground-level grave markers have sunk. The project is expected to be completed next year.

Workers are removing the top eight inches of ground cover, temporarily moving to the side grave markers and digging up any vases — about 10,000 sites have them — to gauge whether they can be reinstalled. Many are deteriorated from years or decades in the ground and cannot be reused.

Once a plastic stabilizing device is placed under the original marker site, the markers are returned to their locations and the new grass is laid.

The cemetery has posted signs at Punchbowl, issued news releases and put information on its website reminding families that their vases and sheaths, which come as a set and cannot be purchased separately, will not be reinstalled if they are not in good condition.

Yet Castagnetti said the issue of missing vases continues to be the No. 1 complaint by far, coming on a daily basis. He said people sometimes do not realize that the vase can be in good condition but the underlying sheath is not, meaning the set — which can cost as much as $300 to $400 new — is "not serviceable," or cannot be reused.

The vases are held by Punchbowl for as long as six months in case families want to reclaim them.

"Unserviceability is our greatest problem," Castagnetti said. "People think we’re the government and should replace (the vases)."

Another problem has been theft. Recyclers have stolen metal vases from Punchbowl gravesites for their recycle value, and families have removed good ones from other gravesites and swapped them with deteriorating ones from their loved ones’ site, according to cemetery personnel.

Several families contacted by the Star-Advertiser questioned whether the cemetery does an adequate job of inspecting the vases. A representative from the renovation contractor and the cemetery are supposed to evaluate them.

Some of the families also said they have seen good vases discarded into piles as if they were trash.

Allison Kubo, who goes to Punchbowl regularly to visit several relatives’ gravesites, including her father’s, said her uncle and aunt’s vase disappeared in 2010 even though she and others in the family can attest it was in good condition.

"I’ve watched the workers, and they really don’t care," Kubo said. "It’s just another job for them."

Hawaii island resident Susan Oshiro said she visited her father’s gravesite at Christmas, saw that the vase was fine but could not find it when she returned in January after her father’s section was renovated.

"This is shameful what’s happening here," Oshiro’s sister, Mari Suzuki of Los Angeles, said during a recent visit to the gravesite.

Castagnetti said he has had no problems to date with the current renovation contractor, although the original one was fired in 2010 after he said the company failed to redo a large section of turf that was not placed properly.

He said Punchbowl takes all customer complaints seriously and tries to resolve them to the customer’s satisfaction, which he added happens 99 percent of the time.

Philipps, Castagnetti’s boss, said the department is rethinking its policy related to in-ground vases that are not serviceable and removed during renovations.

To try to resolve the Cowan case, Philipps last week talked to her about her husband’s Punchbowl marker.

Because of the unpleasant experience she had, Cowan said she no longer wants anything to do with Punchbowl and prefers a marker at Fort Bayard National Cemetery in New Mexico, which is just a few miles from where her husband grew up.

Philipps said the department offered to provide her with a new marble memorial marker that will stand upright — as opposed to the ground-level ones at Punchbowl — and will install it at Fort Bayard, all at no cost to Cowan. The Punchbowl marker will be destroyed.

Cowan said the family is pleased with that resolution.

"At least I’ll be able to extricate myself from all this drama and never-ending contradictions (at Punchbowl),” she said. "It’s just been ridiculous."