#Veterans #Cemeteries
The VA awarded $77 million in grants for 20 veteran cemeteries across the country during fiscal year 2025. These grants will allow the establishment of the first state veterans cemetery in Alaska (to serve 12,000 veterans) and the expansion of 19 others.
Besides the establishment of a veterans cemetery in Alaska, the grants will allow expansions of existing veterans cemeteries in Arizona (2), Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky (2), Massachusetts (2), Montana, New Mexico (2), North Carolina (3), Tennessee, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.
In fiscal year 2025, more than 43,000 veterans were buried in grant funded cemeteries, with 124 cemeteries supported since the program began in 1980. Over the years, grants have provided over $1 billion to these state cemeteries. The goal: to provide burial access within 75 miles of home to 94% of all veterans.
As an added benefit, veterans who are buried in VA grant cemeteries are also included on the Veterans Legacy Memorial site (www.vlm.cem.va.gov). The VLM is an online memorial with the records of over 10 million veterans who are buried at VA National Cemeteries, VA grant funded cemeteries such as the ones receiving grants this year, U.S. Park Service National Cemeteries, and many others. The Legacy page for each veteran is a place for family members, friends and former military comrades to add their own memories of the veteran.
To find a veteran’s page, do a search on the VLM website. You need the veteran’s first and last name, but you can fine-tune your search by adding year of death, the cemetery you want to search, the branch of service and other information.
If you want to add details to your veteran’s legacy page, first look around at other pages to get an idea of the possibilities. You can add awards and decorations, career details, a military timeline, a biography, PDF documents that can include newspaper clippings, photos and much more.
To learn more about the VA’s burial and memorial benefits, go to www.cem.va.gov/burial-memorial-benefits.
(c) 2026 King Features Synd., Inc.
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