Veterans Cemetery in Oklahoma Named; Burials To Begin Early

WASHINGTON — The next new national cemetery for veterans will be called Fort Sill National Cemetery, near Oklahoma City, and will open for burials this fall, officials of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced. 

Development of a three-acre burial section began last month, directed from an office trailer.  A temporary funeral service shelter is being built.  When fully developed, the 391-acre site, transferred to VA by the Department of Army in 1998, will serve approximately 166,000 veterans in southwestern Oklahoma and become the 120^th VA national cemetery.  

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony J. Principi, who recently named the facility for the adjacent military fort, praised its development as an example of continued congressional support for creating burial space for America’s aging veterans.  

“Oklahoma’s legislative delegation and VA have worked closely to fill this need among western Oklahoma veterans and their families,” Principi said.  

The property can meet the burial needs of Oklahoma veterans for the next 100 years, VA officials estimate.

VA has selected Larry Williams as director of Fort Sill National Cemetery, and he will begin his duties in early July.  Williams was director of the Rock Island, Ill., and Keokuk, Iowa, national cemeteries for the last five years.  He directed other cemeteries since joining VA’s National Cemetery Administration in 1991.  Earlier in his career, Williams was operations manager of a large oil field service company.  He is a Marine Corps veteran.

Congress appropriated $12 million this year to construct the cemetery’s structures and develop part of its burial space.  VA will award a contract by the end of this year and the project is expected to take about two years to complete.  It will provide 10,270 full-casket gravesites, 1,000 in-ground burial spaces for cremated remains and another 1,000 cremation niches in columbaria.  The project will also include two committal service shelters, an administration and maintenance complex, an assembly area and a public information center, as well as an entryway, roadway, landscaping, utilities and irrigation.

Fort Sill National Cemetery is five miles north of Lawton and 75 miles southwest of Oklahoma City.

Information on VA burial benefits is available from national cemetery offices, from VA regional offices at 1-800-827-1000, or from the VA web sites on the Internet at http://www.cem.va.gov.