Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s famous quote that “old soldiers never die; they just fade away” was powerful imagery, but it belies reality.
Old soldiers do die, and the ground to bury them is not so plentiful as it once was.
With about 1,100 World War II veterans dying every day, the government is under pressure to find space in veterans cemeteries. By 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the annual number of deaths of veterans from all U.S. conflicts will reach 620,000, or about 1,700 a day.
The battle is playing out in this isolated community of southeastern Kansas, where neat rows of knee-high white marble headstones are creeping closer to the boundaries of Ft. Scott National Cemetery.
In a concession to the space squeeze, some veterans’ burial plots are smaller. Sloping land that originally was deemed unusable is being used. And throughout the United States, new sites are being developed in remote as well as heavily populated areas to accommodate veterans’ burials and to create grounds closer to veterans’ homes.
At Ft. Scott, one of 12 Civil War national cemeteries dedicated in 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln, obsolescence has been averted by passing the hat.
“It looked like the cemetery would close, so we started to see if we couldn’t buy some ground,” said Bill Danley, an 83-year-old World War II Army veteran who was part of the force that liberated the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.
After being told by the government that no money was available to buy more land, Danley and 12 other veterans from the Ft. Scott area took out a loan for $26,000 and bought 11 1/2 acres to the south, just across the old stone wall from the cemetery. They worked the crowds at American Legion and VFW halls in Kansas for collections to pay off the loan.
“Got $501 passing the hat at the VFW state convention in Hutchinson. I’ll never forget that,” Danley said.
Once they had gathered the money to pay off the loan, they donated the land to the Department of Veterans Affairs in 1994. Congress appropriated $2 million to develop the site. What is now a rolling, dusty expanse scraped by large earthmovers will, by Veterans Day, Nov. 11, be a grassy cemetery ready to handle about 3,500 burial sites. The cemetery has stretched its life span by 35 years as a result.
“We were afraid that if we waited, when homes were starting to be built, the land would be hard to get,” said Paul Pavey, an 81-year-old Army veteran. “We have a lot of pride in this.”
Dozens to be expanded
With the backing of federal dollars, at least 60 veterans cemeteries are being expanded or are scheduled to be, according to the VA, which since 1997 has opened large veterans cemeteries in New York, Ohio, Texas and Washington and–in 1999–the Abraham Lincoln National Veterans Cemetery in Joliet, Ill. Six more are being developed in California, Georgia, Florida, Michigan, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.
Land donations are playing an important role in the expansion of old cemeteries. A veteran from Atlanta donated 770 acres to the VA in April. Veterans groups in Fayetteville, Ark., have been buying parcels around the 134-year-old Fayetteville National Cemetery since 1991 and donating them to the VA.
While the land totals only 5 1/2 acres, it buys the old cemetery a precious commodity: time. At the estimated veterans’ death rates, the Fayetteville cemetery should be able to stay in business through 2012.
Others have not fared so well. The VA still is trying to find space to reopen the veterans cemetery in Mobile, Ala. The cemetery in Natchez, Miss., is down to its last couple of years of space, said Michael Elliott, chief of the architectural and engineering division for the VA’s National Cemetery Administration.
“Our workload is increasing, and it’s getting more difficult,” Elliott said. “There is less land available, and more and more of it is being developed.”
Urban concentration
About 75 percent of the nation’s 25 million veterans live in urban areas and are within 75 to 100 miles of a veterans cemetery, the department said. Increasing demand for burial space in large urban centers is being met by new cemeteries in those areas.
At the same time, the press is on to develop or expand sites in more remote areas such as Ft. Scott, near the Missouri border. The government is financing efforts to open new veterans cemeteries in Kansas in Winfield, south of Wichita; WaKeeney in west central Kansas; Dodge City in southwest Kansas; and Junction City, about 130 miles west of Kansas City.
The VA and state governments have combined efforts to develop and operate 47 state veterans cemeteries, four of which were dedicated this year. When the Springfield (Mo.) National Cemetery, created to handle casualties from the Civil War’s Battle of Wilson’s Creek, ran out of space, the state and federal government jointly built a new cemetery about 10 miles from the southwest Missouri site. Twenty-four more sites are in the planning stages, said Bill Jayne, director of the State Cemetery Grants Service, part of the National Cemetery Administration.
Qualifying factors
Burial at veterans cemeteries is open to veterans with honorable discharges and to their families. While there is no cost for burial, a VA spokesman said that is not a factor in the effort to develop more burial space.
Though only about 10 percent to 15 percent of the nation’s veterans choose to be buried in veterans cemeteries, the demand can vary wildly.
Elliott said veterans cemeteries in smaller communities “are more important to veterans because they identify them as part of their community. It’s close to home and it is a part of them,” he said.
The burial numbers are growing at Ft. Scott, to 120 last year. That’s up 50 percent from 1994.
Wearing a bright blue cap that reads “America is #1 … Thanks to Our Vets,” Perry Dobbins, a 79-year-old Army veteran, said he is encouraged by the expansion at Ft. Scott. “My wife’s already buried here, and I’ve got my spot,” Dobbins said.
Thirteen veterans were part of the group that started the expansion plan in 1991. Provided they beat the odds that are mounting against them, 12 plan to be in attendance when the expansion is dedicated in November.
