WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is seeking more volunteers to research monuments in national cemeteries and soldiers’ lots. With Veterans Day approaching, VA hopes the inventory project will spur the public’s interest in the history found in national cemeteries.
VA began the documentation process last spring and now estimates approximately 500 memorials or monuments will be found in its 120 national cemeteries and 33 soldiers’ lots.
“As stewards of these monuments — many of them dating to our cemeteries’ founding in the Civil War — we have a responsibility to catalogue and preserve these markers of American history,” said Acting Under Secretary for Memorial Affairs S. Eric Benson.
More than 75 volunteers have signed on to study 174 monuments so far. VA hopes to complete the project in the next few months but will continue to recruit volunteers into next year. The memorials yet to be studied are in cities as wide-ranging in size and location as Honolulu, Philadelphia and Prairie du Chien, Wis.
With instruction booklets, survey questionnaires and camera film provided to them, volunteers document the materials, inscriptions and condition of the memorials for historic and preservation purposes. VA officials said most national cemeteries are not staffed to conduct the research sometimes needed, and volunteers provide an objective assessment of the memorials’ physical condition.
Civil War enthusiasts, scholars, teachers, archivists, active and retired military members, landscape architects and parents looking for weekend activities for their children are among the current volunteers. Some volunteers asked to survey cemeteries away from where they live to have a reason for a short vacation.
Sites in 30 states need volunteers, including Illinois with six cities having a total of 47 monuments. Grafton, W.Va.; Maxwell, Neb.; Salem, N.J.; Biloxi, Miss.; Ft. Gibson, Okla.; and Bayamon, Puerto Rico, all have just one monument to be assessed.
For information, including a list of localities where volunteers are needed, visit VA’s National Cemetery Administration website www.cem.va.gov under “What’s New,” e-mail nca.memorials@mail.va.gov” or call (202) 565-5426.
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