Who’s eligible for burial in a national cemetery?
The federal government has extensive criteria defining who is eligible for burial in a national cemetery. Following are some highlights:
- Any member of the U.S. armed forces (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard) who is on active duty, or who is a veteran discharged under conditions other than dishonorable.
- Any U.S. citizen who served in the armed forces of any government allied with the United States during wartime.
- The surviving spouse or dependent of a veteran. The dependent should be a minor or meet other criteria.
Source: National Cemetery Administration, http://www.cem.va.gov/burial_benefits/eligible.asp
Sherry Killen held out her hand. Her stepmother took it. They walked a pathway lined by white monuments. The stones stretched out in straight rows as if standing at attention. Once, the people buried under them stood that way, too.
The two set up a yellow folding chair in front of one. Ellen Cuprowski settled herself in it and looked at the granite marker reminding the world that Paul Cuprowski had lived.
“I so miss him,” she said. “It drives me crazy.”
A New Jersey native, Cuprowski was visiting his children in the Atlanta area three years ago when he died. After they got over the shock of losing their 72-year-old dad, Cuprowski's kids agreed that, yes, interment at the Georgia National Cemetery would be appropriate. His stone joined the long lines.
Cuprowski is one of more than 13,000 people interred at the cemetery. They were sailors and airmen, coast guardsmen and Marines. A lot, like Cuprowski, were soldiers.
Monday is Memorial Day, a national holiday for Americans to remember Sgt. Cuprowski, who served during the Vietnam era, and millions more who wore our nation's uniforms. Parades will ka-lang their way along Main Streets. Beauty queens will sit atop floats and wave. Scouts will place tiny flags on graves remembering warriors from the Revolutionary War to the latest operations in Afghanistan.
And, everywhere, color guards will be on the job. They’ll make sure their shoes are gleaming, their uniforms pressed. They’ll greet another widow, another widower. They’ll fold American flags and place them in the laps of the living, a homage to the dead.
‘Room left to fill’
Last year, the federal government oversaw and funded ceremonies for more than 350,000 veterans, their spouses and (in some cases) dependents. This fiscal year, it’s set aside $266 million for those services, plus cemeteries’ operations and maintenance.
National cemeteries date to 1862, when Congress authorized President Abraham Lincoln to establish burial grounds for increasing numbers of Civil War casualties. He oversaw the creation of 10. Today, there are 134. Two are in Georgia — the cemetery here, plus the Marietta National Cemetery. The National Cemetery Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, is in charge of them.
The administration looks after cemeteries in 40 states and Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory. The sites range from massive — the national cemetery in Calverton, N.Y., comprises 1,045 acres — to miniscule: the federal plot in Hampton, Va. is less than a third of an acre. More than 4 million are buried in national cemeteries.
The Canton cemetery, atop a hill that overlooks the Etowah River, encompasses 775 acres; 110 have been developed. A decade old, it has room for thousands more burials and should last five decades. The 23-acre Marietta burial ground was established in 1866 to inter nearly 10,000 Union soldiers killed in the Union Army’s Atlanta Campaign. It’s full, and no longer accepts bodies for burial.
This Memorial Day, the administration is launching Honoring their Legacy, an outreach program. "We're encouraging schools … to visit cemeteries to educate students about the legacies veterans left," said Jessica Schiefer, a public affairs officer for the association.
The Canton site held a ceremony on Saturday. The Marietta cemetery will observe Memorial Day with its traditional noon ceremony.
There are more dead to honor every day. In 2015, national cemeteries opened in Tallahassee and Cape Canaveral. Officials are readying another cemetery in Omaha, opening this fall. Plans are in the works for federal burial grounds in southern Colorado and western New York.
The population of the Canton cemetery grows daily, too. On a recent morning, a computer monitor at the cemetery's administration building displayed the ceremonies scheduled through Memorial Day. The names of the deceased marched: Wolf, Corley, Jones, Norris, Purcell, Piontek, Greinke, Tosh, Giles, Buschman, Simpkins…
Marge Helgerson, director of the Marietta and Canton cemeteries, motioned toward a map. It depicted the Canton cemetery’s 16 sections. Two have been filled.
“We stay pretty busy,” she said. “We have a lot of room left to fill.”
Honored in death
A small tract forever belongs to Christopher C. Patton, U.S. Army. The white stone erected over his earthly remains reminds passersby that Patton nine years ago died during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was from Lawrenceville, and he was 19.
Debe and Becca Tanner, who’d known him in life, came to Canton to honor him in death. He’d been a friend of their family.
He was a tall kid, said Becca Tanner, a senior at Kennesaw State University. He evoked memories of a certain sepulchral servant from the TV show “The Addams Family,” she said. “He reminded me of Lurch.”
Lurch as a good guy, of course.
Debe Tanner, Becca’s mom, took a photo of the stone. She stood and took in the view — all those markers, stretching like giant dominoes to a line of hardwoods. The wind snatched at flowers placed against a nearby stone. A Mylar balloon, left to recall a birthday, bumped against another.
Over the hill, an honor guard readied to greet a widow.
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