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VA Reopens Prescott National Cemetery for Cremation Burials

February 6, 2007

WASHINGTON – Veterans in central Arizona can now be buried at Prescott National Cemetery with the opening of a columbarium for cremation inurnments, the Department of Veterans (VA) announced.

"This cemetery reopening helps us to fulfill the commitment to offer a final resting place to those who have served our nation," said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson. "We can again provide perpetual commemoration for veterans and family members at Prescott National Cemetery."

The new, expanded facility for cremated remains officially opened Feb. 5.

The cemetery closed in 1974 when the facility ran out of space for casket burials, although eligible family members of veterans already buried there could be interred. The new columbarium provides a burial option to nearly 27,000 veterans and their dependents who were not served by an open VA national or state veterans cemetery.

The $2.4 million columbarium wall on the western side of the cemetery provides 3,000 niches for cremated remains and was built by Hal Hays Construction, a California-based small business contractor. Infrastructure improvements, including a road, sidewalks, irrigation and landscaping, were also made at the cemetery.

Prescott National Cemetery was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.

Veterans with a discharge other than dishonorable, their spouses and dependent children can be buried in a national cemetery. Other burial benefits available for eligible veterans, regardless of whether they are buried in a national or a private cemetery, include a burial flag, a Presidential Memorial Certificate, and a government headstone or marker.

In the midst of the largest cemetery expansion since the Civil War, VA operates 124 national cemeteries in 39 states and Puerto Rico and 33 soldiers’ lots and monument sites. More than three million Americans, including veterans of every war and conflict, are buried in VA's national cemeteries.

Information on VA burial benefits can be obtained from national cemetery offices, from the Internet at http://www.cem.va.gov , or by calling VA regional offices toll-free at 1-800-827-1000.

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Larry Scott

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