An old solution toarranging veteranburial sites is nolonger working.
U.S. Veterans Find They Have No Resting PlaceBy Cliff MontgomeryAmerica is short of places in which to bury its veteran dead, say recent reports.According to The New York Times, “The federal government is racing to keep pace with the deaths of America’s warriors.[…] Deaths are expected to peak this year, at 688,000, and continue near that level for a long time.”Why? Because “9.5 million of the nation’s living veterans are over the age of 65,” said The Times.”The Department of Veterans Affairs (V.A.) says it will take at least until 2009 to catch up with demand,.” the paper added.The pressures on the current system are overwhelming. Half of the country’s 124 veterans cemeteries are closed to burials. However, more than 1,800 veterans die each day, with 12 percent choosing a soldier’s burial.The initial cause of this problem can be traced to a long lull in building veteran cemeteries, between 1940 and 1970. The few built were on sites the government already owned or got free, often far from the veterans who needed them.This made sense at the time; it was cheaper and easier in the short term than venturing into the private marketplace. But over time, and with the massive number of veterans from World War II reaching its twilight years, the flaw in the system became more and more obvious.With a push from Congress, the V.A. in 1999 initiated the largest expansion of the national cemetery system since the Civil War. In the end twelve regions of the country were identified as needing new cemeteries. Each region held at least 170,000 veterans, yet possessed no available burial sites within 75 miles–the farthest distance that veterans’ families were willing to travel.Five of the 12 have been built, but pent-up demand is great. The result has been long-dead soldiers in urns, mausoleums or civilian plots, unable to go to their final resting place until a new cemetery opens. That can happen in two years–but only under the best of circumstances. More likely is a lengthy five- or six-year process, which includes Congressional oversight and a separate appropriations bill at every turn.Take for instance the issues confronting the new cemetery in Atlanta. It continues to hold delayed burials, six months after opening. The director, Sandy Beckley, said 303 of its first 530 funerals were for veterans who had died as long as three years ago. She added that 120 of those first funerals still have not been performed.In those places where burial grounds are at capacity, the V.A. looks for ways to squeeze in more veterans, sometimes buying adjacent land or building columbaria for cremated remains.At a Civil War graveyard in Marietta, GA–which Ms. Beckley also runs–three casualties of the Iraq War have been accommodated by removing a grove of dead trees and using space relinquished by the spouses of veterans who had remarried.At least one woman in Pennsylvania, widow Catherine Leckie, has decided the wait is already too long. Her late husband, Arthur, a Vietnam-era marine, died a year and a half ago of a cancer caused by Agent Orange.Years ago, Mr. Leckie had been awed by his parents’ funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. It was “like seeing a president buried on TV,” Mrs. Leckie told The Times.Therefore a full veteran’s burial appealed to her, replete with a 21-gun salute, taps played by a lone bugler and the American flag snapped into a crisp triangle. But Indiantown Gap, where the closest veteran cemetery is located, was too far from her home in Ottsville, PA.She therefore decided to follow her husband’s humorous last wishes, which he had lifted from an article called ‘Going Out With a Bang’. She loaded part of his ashes into shotgun shells, and had a dozen of Mr. Leckie’s buddies fire them over his favorite duck blinds or fishing holes. The remaining ashes Mrs. Leckie stored in an old shotgun shell box beside her bed.When she heard from local V.A. officials that a new cemetery was in the works, she briefly considered a full soldier’s burial for the box containing her husband’s remaining ashes, remembering his appreciation of the full military burial service. She even discussed it with her mother, herself an Army widow, who also keeps her husband’s ashes at home. After all this time, they decided to leave well enough alone.“We did what we did when there were no other choices,” said Mrs. Leckie to The Times, “and we’re good with that.”
