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VA Awards $10 Million Contract for Rock Island National Cemetery

February 23, 2007

Continues VA Commitment to Shrine-Like Tributes

WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has awarded a construction contract for more than $10 million to a Chicago contractor to expand the Rock Island, Ill., National Cemetery.

“With this expansion, VA is continuing to keep our commitment to the men and women who have served our nation by providing a shrine-like final resting place for them and their families setting for many years,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson.

VA awarded the $10.1 million contract to Veteran/Pacific Joint Venture, a minority-owned small business based in Chicago.

The expansion project encompasses approximately 25 acres and will provide more than 7,000 gravesites, including casket gravesites, pre-placed crypts and a columbarium for cremation remains. It will also provide a new committal service shelter, an assembly area, public restrooms, an information building, a maintenance area, and additions and renovations to the administration building. New and renovated infrastructure features for water distribution, roads and utilities are included. VA expects to begin construction within approximately one month and to be completed by late 2008.

The expansion will permit burials for veterans and eligible family members to continue at Rock Island National Cemetery for at least the next decade.

Illinois’ other six national cemeteries are Abraham Lincoln near Chicago; Danville; Camp Butler in Springfield; Mound City; Quincy; and Alton. Abraham Lincoln, Danville, Camp Butler and Mound City national cemeteries have space available for casketed and cremated remains. Alton has space available for cremated remains and can accommodate casketed remains in the gravesites of previously interred family members. Quincy is closed to new interments, but can bury family members in existing gravesites.

In the midst of the largest cemetery expansion since the Civil War to care for the aging veterans population, 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 national cemeteries.

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

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.

For information on the Rock Island National Cemetery, call the cemetery office at (309) 782-2094.

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Larry Scott

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