Expansion Continues VA’s Commitment to Shrine-like Tributes
WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has awarded a construction contract for more than $19 million to a Minnesota contractor to expand the Fort Snelling National Cemetery in Minneapolis.
“With this expansion, VA is keeping our commitment to the men and women who have served our nation by providing a shrine-like tribute to veterans and their families,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson.
Sheehy Construction Company of St. Paul was awarded $19.3 million to develop approximately 25,000 gravesites, including graves with pre-placed crypts, and a columbarium for cremation remains.
The expansion project encompasses nearly 60 acres. Besides burial space, it will include renovations and additions to the administration building, public information building and maintenance facility. New committal service shelters, signage, site furnishings, fencing and landscaping will also be included. VA expects construction to be completed by late 2009.
The expansion will permit burials for veterans and eligible family members to continue at Fort Snelling National Cemetery for at least the next decade.
In the midst of the largest cemetery expansion since the Civil War to serve 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’s 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 a 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 Fort Snelling National Cemetery, call the cemetery office at (612) 726-1127.
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