Arkansas Army National Guardsmen slowly folded the U. S. flag as a gun salute and taps ended the graveside service for Sgt. Arthur McGill, a 26-year-old former Gentry resident who was killed last July while on patrol in Baghdad.

The July 28 service was posted online via streaming video by the Nelson-Berna Funeral Home in Fayetteville. It was later viewed on a projection screen by a large group of McGill's 1 st Battalion, 9 th Field Artillery friends still fighting in Iraq.

Nelson-Berna, Northwest Arkansas' first mortuary providing video webcasts of funerals, has posted seven funerals on its Web site since it began the service earlier this year. The funeral home subscribes to Dallas-based Memorial Cast, which provides the service to 20 mortuaries nationwide.

?Funeral homes everywhere are going to great lengths to personalize funerals and make them as meaningful as possible to families,? said Steve Gardner, a spokesman with the Brookfield, Wis.-based National Funeral Director's Association.

Nelson-Berna performs about 180 services a year, with the option of webcasts used sparingly by families for relatives and friends who can't make it to a service, said Scott Berna, the funeral home's owner.

McGill's grandfather and uncle were unable to travel from Houston for his funeral, which made the option of a webcast appealing to McGill's family, said Jamie Gilstrap, McGill's aunt.

Berna's Web site administrator prompted decision to add the service, Berna said, though it wasn't easy convincing the 25-year funeral service veteran.

Others who have taken advantage of the free service, include a Fayetteville-area family with relatives in Asia and a family who had several members miss the service because of last-minute travel problems.

Berna uses a digital video camera to record indoor funeral and graveside services. He loads the video onto a computer and edits the service in about an hour before spending three to four hours compressing the file so it can be e-mailed to his Web site developers.

After the family has reviewed and approved the webcasts, the services are posted on the mortuary's Web site, www. nelsonberna. com, usually within about two days of the service. Then they are available for anyone to download and view.

He said he has witnessed fighting during a service, seen a young woman chased out of a service by family members of the deceased and watched a woman die during her husband's funeral.

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