New national cemetery near Canton ready for first burial

By The Associated Press

Posted 12:10PM on Saturday, April 15, 2006

The land is fallow, blanketed with rolling hills that might have made a beautiful golf course in somebody else's dream.Soon, these 775 secluded acres in rural Cherokee County, north of Atlanta, will overflow with hard-fought memories from battles long past like Iwo Jima, Inchon and Danang, and eventually from recent ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.The new Georgia National Cemetery will accept its first burials on April 24, becoming sacred grounds and a lasting tribute to those veterans who served their country in times of her greatest need.With nothing else nearby other than the swell of the piedmont beneath the protective silhouette of Kennesaw Mountain _ where Confederates tried in vain to block Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's march to Atlanta _ the cemetery is a sanctuary of peace."It's going to be one of the most picturesque cemeteries because pretty much every where you look, you see mountains," said Sandra Beckley, director of the cemetery, a $28 million project expected to serve veterans and their families for the next 50 years.Diane King of Blairsville, Ga., will bury her husband and father there in a joint service _ among the first Army veterans interred at the new cemetery.King said her father, D-Day survivor Lucius P. Young, wanted to be buried at the new cemetery. "He had been there when they broke ground," King said. "He just kept telling me he hoped he'd live long enough that the cemetery would be in."But he died last year at age 84. Since then, his remains have been kept at a funeral home, awaiting burial in the new cemetery.King's husband, Vietnam veteran Edward F. King, died in 1996. Both men had funerals with full military honors, so Diane King does not know whether they will be repeated when the men's remains are moved to the Canton cemetery. But she is certain it is the right place for them."It's magnificent," she said. "The views are awesome."On land donated by the late World War II veteran and Atlanta developer Scott Hudgens, the cemetery joins 122 others run by the National Cemetery Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.The national cemetery program dates back to the height of the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln signed legislation in 1862 recognizing that national cemeteries were needed "...for the soldiers who shall die in the service of the country."In 1873, the program was expanded to include all honorably discharged veterans. It provides the gravesite (including a concrete graveliner for caskets), headstone and perpetual care of the grave. It also opens and closes the gravesite and provides the veteran's family a memorial certificate and U.S. flag.Two other new national cemeteries, in Solano County, Calif., and in Lake Worth, Fla., are expected to be open by the end of the year. Congress passed laws in 1999 and 2003 to create these and nine other national cemeteries near areas with large veteran populations.Sometimes families wait years to have their loved ones buried in a national cemetery near them. This was the case for Cherokee County Probate Court Judge Kipling "Kip" McVay, whose husband, Lt. Col. Robert S. Stubbs II, died in August 2002. The 21-year Marine Corps officer, a veteran of wars that included World War II and Korea, will be moved to Georgia National Cemetery from a county cemetery on April 24."He won't be moving too far, just down the road," McVay said. "The difference in his being in a national cemetery kind of ratifies how the family thinks about his service to the country. His inclination was to always serve the country. It's really a way of continuing to honor the veteran."Other government agencies oversee other national cemeteries, including the nation's most famous _ Arlington National Cemetery (run by the Army) in Virginia. Georgia's Andersonville National Cemetery, one of the Civil War's largest Confederate military prisons and the place where nearly 13,000 Union prisoners of war died from poor living conditions, is cared for by the National Park Service because it is a national historic site.Many of the country's early national cemeteries were relatively small, such as the 23 acres of Marietta National Cemetery, the first in Georgia overseen by the National Cemetery Administration. That cemetery, established in 1866, has long since been closed for new veterans' burials, although it's a little-known secret that even "full" national cemeteries must find room to accommodate any active-duty serviceman or woman killed in action.Yet modern government cemeteries are built on a much larger scale, designed to be available for veterans' burials for generations.While in the movies, people labor all day to dig a single grave. The government is preparing the grounds for the new national cemetery by using excavation equipment to carve out two-acre-wide sections throughout the 775 acres. (Only 300 acres of the hilly terrain is useable by the cemetery)Concrete crypts, spaced only a quarter-inch apart, then are inserted into the giant holes, which later are covered with sod. The cemetery will hold 31,000 gravesites when all the work is finished.The crypts, which can hold a spouse's coffin on top of a veteran's, are unearthed and opened as needed. There also are 6,000 in-ground and above-ground sites for cremation remains.When fully completed, the cemetery will be able to accommodate at least 68,000 veterans and their dependents. The land preparation is expected to continue for months to come _ only a third of the cemetery is ready for burials.At a national cemetery, each veteran shares an equality of service after death. Veterans are buried in the order they come to the cemetery, not by rank."We don't do an Admiral's row or a General's row. A private might be buried next to a four-star" general, Beckley said. "They're equal, their headstones are in a row just like they stood when they were waiting for mail."____On The Net:HASH(0x1ce14a8)HASH(0x1ce1550)