Georgia's Largest Veterans Cemetery Moves Forward After VA provides $13 Million in Funding – Military.com

Georgia’s Largest Veterans Cemetery Moves Forward After VA provides $13 Million in Funding  Military.com

The cemetery will take up more than 200 acres and feature over 1,500 crypts. On June 6, 2014, the Missing In America Project in cooperation with the American Legion Post 71 of North Augusta, S.C. and Post 193 of Chapin, S.C., conducted a full military honors funeral for seven previously unclaimed Veterans at the Fort Jackson National Cemetery in Columbia, S.C. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has approved over $13.6 million in funds to create a veterans cemetery in Augusta, Ga. Proper burials are important to honor deceased service members and to provide closure for their families. But military families in Augusta currently often travel long distances for burial services, like in Fort Jackson, Columbia, or to the Georgia Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Milledgeville.

The $13,610,908 grant, awarded by the VA's National Cemetery Administration on Sept. 16, intends to change this. It will create the largest veterans cemetery in the entire state, built on more than 200 acres of land of state-owned property beside the Gracewood campus of East Central Georgia Regional Hospital. It was awarded after those behind the project applied for the funding in May. "Funding for the long-awaited veterans cemetery in Augusta has now been officially awarded to the State of Georgia," Rep. Rick Allen, (R-Ga.) said in a statement. "To our veterans and their families