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SOUTH FLORIDA VA CEMETERY READY TO OPEN --
And, there's already a lengthy waiting list.
Story here...
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/
local/southflorida/sfl-hlpcemetery08mar08,0
,6175776.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines
Story below:
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South Florida V.A. cemetery ready to open --
and there's already a lengthy waiting list
By Diane C. Lade
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
What began as a dream a decade ago will become reality next month when
the first veteran is laid to rest at the South Florida National
Cemetery.
The burial ground west of Lake Worthwill open April 16, two years after
the original projected date that was rolled back several times. As many
as a dozen interments are expected on the first day, said South Florida
Cemetery Director Kurt Rotar. There would be more, but only one of the
six shelters for services will be ready.
Rotar expects to keep up that pace for months, with as many as a dozen
burials six days a week. More than 700 families are holding cremated
remains or planning to move their loved ones from other cemeteries to
South Florida National -- so many that the Veterans Affairs will not add
new names to the waiting list until after April 9.
Service and burial scheduling for new national cemeteries will be
handled by a centralized VA system in St. Louis, with requests being
taken in the order they were received and juggled with the burials of
the newly deceased. Living veterans cannot make reservations, and their
interments -- or those of their spouses, who are entitled to national
cemetery gravesites, even if they die before the veterans -- are handled
by funeral homes at the time of death.
Lois Silverstein called the cemetery office just days after her husband,
Joel, died at 72 of pancreatic cancer in 2005, which blindsided him so
suddenly that the couple barely had time for a discussion of last
wishes.
"We never really had touched on it before, but after he got sick, Joel
told me he wanted to be buried in a veterans cemetery," said
Silverstein, of Delray Beach. Her husband had been an Army sergeant
during the Korean War "and he was very happy being in the service."
Now Silverstein is preparing to move her husband from an unmarked grave
in Hollywood to South Florida National, then gather their three children
for a memorial service. "I've moved on with everything else in my life
except this," she said. "It's that last piece of unfinished business."
Daniel Perrin, general manager of Dorsey-E. Earl Smith Memory Gardens
Funeral Home in Lake Worth, said he's already received "a lot of
inquiries" about relocations -- some from as far away as Florida
National Cemetery near Tampa, the closest veterans burial ground
The first burials in the 50-acre "fast track" section near the cemetery
entrance off U.S. 441, which has room for about 10,000 in-ground and
cremated remains, were pushed back last year from this spring to late
summer because of wet weather stalling site preparation.
But Rotar said that when he came on board in January, VA officials told
him to scramble and make an April deadline. "The feeling was the
veterans were asking for it to open and had been waiting a long time,"
said Rotar, who previously was director of Massachusetts National
Cemetery, on Cape Cod, for nine years.
Bulldozers and graders growled over the barren grounds this week as
workers plumbed an irrigation system in advance of laying sod and
planting trees. The South Florida site will have more water features
than most national cemeteries, Rotar said. Three of its five lakes,
required to offset environmental impacts, already circle the trailers
serving as temporary administration and construction offices.
A columbarium, for above-ground remains, probably won't be completed for
up to another five years. When finished, the cemetery will cover 313
acres and have room for 115,000 veterans, enough to meet South Florida's
needs for the next 50 years, according to the VA.
South Florida National is the fifth VA cemetery in Florida, home to one
of the nation's largest populations of World War II veterans. The VA is
purchasing land near Jacksonville and Sarasota for two additional burial
grounds.
The 130 families seeking to move already buried remains to South Florida
National will have to pay for the relocation, which can cost as much as
several thousand dollars. The 570 others on the waiting list, with
cremated remains, can bring their urns or boxes to the cemetery
themselves. The VA does the burial and provides a gravesite, a marker, a
grave liner and a military honor guard at no charge.
Diane Lade can be reached at
dlade@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6618.
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Larry Scott --
