WASHINGTON – In the largest expansion of veterans’ cemeteries since the Civil War, which is partly driven by the deaths of nearly 1,100 World War II veterans each day, the Georgia National Cemetery became the nation’s 123rd veterans cemetery during a ceremony today.
“Our cemeteries are national shrines to the sacrifice and valor of the men and women who have served this nation in uniform,” said the Honorable R. James Nicholson, Secretary of Veterans Affairs. “It is a sacred obligation and an honor for the Department of Veterans Affairs to preserve our national cemeteries as lasting tributes to our service members and veterans.”
Nicholson took part in the dedication today of the new facility in a program that included the director of Georgia’s office of veterans affairs, Pete Wheeler, and former Congressman Bob Barr.
The 775-acre site is in Cherokee County, approximately 40 miles north of Atlanta, along state Route 20, west of Canton. Nearly 400,000 veterans and their families live within the service area of the national cemetery.
The land for the cemetery was donated to VA by Scott Hudgens, the late Atlanta World War II veteran, land developer and philanthropist. The cemetery is being built with a $31 million VA contract awarded to J. M. Wilkerson Construction Company, Inc., of Marietta, Ga., in December 2004.
Burials began in April on approximately 50 acres, which includes one committal shelter and four burial sections. These sections have capacity for 8,119 full-casket gravesites, consisting of 5,923 sites with pre-placed crypts and 2,196 standard gravesites, as well as 3,129 in-ground cremation gravesites.
The complete 110-acre phase-one construction project calls for 17,200 full-casket gravesites -- 12,000 with pre-placed crypts -- and a 3,000-unit columbarium, 765 in-ground burial sites and a scattering garden for cremated remains.
The plan also includes construction of two more committal shelters, a public information center with electronic gravesite locator and public restrooms, a cemetery entrance area, flag assembly area, a memorial walkway, a donations area, and infrastructure elements including roadways, landscaping, utilities and irrigation. Phase-one construction is scheduled for completion in July 2007.
Veterans with a discharge other than dishonorable, their spouses and eligible dependent children can be buried in a national cemetery. Other burial benefits available for all eligible veterans, regardless of whether they are buried in a national cemetery or a private cemetery, include a burial flag, a Presidential Memorial Certificate and a government headstone or marker.
With the addition of the Georgia facility, VA now operates 123 national cemeteries in 39 states and Puerto Rico, plus 33 soldiers' lots and monument sites. More than three million Americans, including veterans of every war and conflict — from the Revolutionary War to the Global War on Terror — are buried in VA’s national cemeteries on more than 16,000 acres of land.
