AUGUSTA (AP) – At age 18, James “Jimmy” Bayard was on the cover of Life magazine. A few months later, he was decorated as an American hero after he was shot through the knee by enemy fire in Vietnam, sending his helicopter crashing into a jungle.

But after he died of a heart attack at the age of 54 in Somerville on Nov. 6, 2004, Bayard became a forgotten soldier. For nine months, his body was stored in the receiving vault of a Fairfield funeral home.

His burial Friday at Maine Veterans’ Memorial Cemetery in Augusta was a tearful moment for the few friends who helped bury him and pay their respects. Noticably absent were members of his family.

According to Bayard’s friends, his two sons, who live out of state, expressed no interest in burying their father.

“It’s a travesty what these kids did,” Denise Manganella of Windsor said. “Whenever we thought about Jimmy, we thought about his body in cold storage. It wasn’t right. It’s been nine months.”

Rick Kalagher, funeral director at Lawry Brothers, said Bayard’s sons came to the funeral home after their father’s death and spoke with another funeral director who is no longer employed there. The sons gave the funeral home permission to embalm Bayard, but that was the last anyone heard from them.

During the next nine months, Kalagher said he left numerous messages on the brothers’ phones that were never returned. He even sent certified letters, the last one asking them merely to give him permission to bury their father at no cost. Eventually, he had to get a court order giving him permission to be in charge of the body so Bayard could be buried, he said.

Bayard received full military honors at his burial.

“He was a decorated vet who received a Vietnam service medal with four Bronze Service Stars and a Purple Heart,” Kalagher said. “All I wanted was to bury this man with some kind of dignity at the veterans cemetery. It was just the right thing to do.”

The sons did not return calls seeking comment.

Records show that Bayard entered the Army on Sept. 25, 1968, and was discharged Sept. 24, 1971, serving half of his time in combat. He received an honorable discharge after serving as a gunman for the 173rd Airborne platoon.

Joseph Manganella said Bayard was wounded when his aircraft was shot down in enemy territory in late September 1971. He was later rescued.

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