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FLORIDA'S NEW VA CEMETERY LETS VETS STAY CLOSE
TO
HOME -- The thousands of veterans who call
South Florida
home now have a place that can be theirs
eternally.
Story here...
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/royalpalmbeach/
content/neighborhood/royalpalmbeach/epa
per/2007/04/04/npr_cpcemetery_0404.html
Story below:
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New VA cemetery lets vets stay close to home
By Angie Francalancia
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
The thousands of veterans who call South Florida home now have a place
that can be theirs eternally.
The South Florida VA National Cemetery will begin interments this month
amid the native trees and lakes that define the site off U.S. 441 south
of Lantana Road.
There will be places for full-casket burials and for cremated remains.
Only about 57 acres will be cleared when the VA begins operations this
month, but ultimately, the cemetery - the only Veterans Affairs cemetery
in South Florida -will cover 315 acres and provide space for 115,000
burials.
"It's a tremendous honor for the area to have a veterans cemetery,
especially in our area that's growing and that has a lot of veterans
already," said Allen Rosen, a Vietnam-era Army veteran and adjutant of
American Legion Post 367.
As soon as the entry road was covered in asphalt about a week ago, area
veterans started driving through it, even as workers continued the
landscaping.
"A lot of the veterans know that we're here and want to make their final
arrangements," said cemetery director, Curt Rotar. "I'm hoping it's a
comfort to them, knowing it's another burial option. This is a veterans
cemetery and a lot of veterans want to be buried in a veterans
cemetery."
Veterans, their spouses and dependent children are eligible for burial,
he said.
According to the VA, there are 1.8 million veterans in South Florida.
The need is so great that the VA plans to open cemeteries in Sarasota
and Jacksonville within the next three years, Rotar said.
The arrangement process is simple.
"When a death occurs, the family of the veteran normally would call a
funeral home, and the funeral home calls us," he said. All the family
needs is a copy of the veteran's honorable discharge papers, he said.
The interment includes the grave site, opening and closing of the grave,
a marker, a flag, perpetual care and administrative cost. "That's all
part of the veterans' benefits," Rotar said.
If a family doesn't have a copy of the honorable discharge papers, "we'd
need as much other information as possible ... where they served, when
they served, the branch of service, the Social Security number or the
service number," he said.
The first burials at the local cemetery will be veterans who have been
dead for some years. In fact, Rotar has a list of more than 700 veterans
or their spouses whose relatives want to have them reburied in the new
cemetery to be closer to home.
While most of those on Rotar's list have relatives who were cremated,
there are some who want them exhumed and moved here. The nearest
national cemetery is in Bushnell, about 250 miles northeast.
At the new cemetery, visitors will find a place that might look much
like the South Florida that many of the World War II veterans found when
they first started moving in droves to the area in the post-war years.
Separating the site from the busy road is a buffer of slash pines and
large oak trees.
"We put 500 plantings in the buffer," said Dick Kollar, the job's VA
resident engineer. While it was originally low-lying land, several lakes
equaling about 7 acres provided the fill to build it up in the middle.
But natural areas of slash pines and cabbage palms create scenes of Old
Florida. Gopher tortoises have a 41/2-acre preserve on the land.
Ceremonies will be done under a committal shelter with a blue metal roof
and two stone benches beneath it. There's a concrete stand for caskets.
A public information center will be built in the center of the site that
will house an electronic kiosk to aid visitors in locating grave sites.
In the front of it, an American flag will fly night and day.
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Larry Scott --
