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Sandhills State Veterans Cemetery to receive nearly $6M VA grant

Fayetteville Observer - 7/31/2018

Aug. 01--North Carolina has received nearly $9 million in grants to help make improvements at two veterans cemeteries.

The Sandhills State Veterans Cemetery in Spring Lake and the Western Carolina State Veterans Cemetery in Black Mountain will benefit from the grants, according to officials with the N.C. Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

The Sandhills State Veterans Cemetery, nestled between Spring Lake and Fort Bragg off N.C. 210, will receive the bulk of the funds, which are being provided by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Officials said they will receive nearly $6 million to fund an expansion of the cemetery, improve landscaping and build supporting infrastructure such as roadways.

The grants will not add more land to the cemeteries, said Angella Dunston, a spokeswoman for the N.C. Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. Instead, the money will help improve the cemeteries and develop further parts of the properties.

Without the grant money, Dunston said, the Sandhills State Veterans Cemetery was nearing capacity and could have run out of room within the next two years.

A nearby cemetery on Fort Bragg, the Main Post Cemetery, filled its capacity several years ago. There are 3,000 veterans and family members buried at the Fort Bragg cemetery.

The Sandhills State Veterans Cemetery, which was created from 50 acres gifted to the state from Fort Bragg in the late 1980s, has more than 6,000 graves, according to officials.

The nearly $6 million grant for Sandhills State Veterans Cemetery will fund 2,240 pre-placed crypts, 362 in-ground cremated remains sites and 880 columbarium niches, in addition to roadways, landscaping and other infrastructure.

The project will serve the approximately 175,000 veterans and family members who are potentially eligible to be buried at the cemetery, Dunston said.

Larry Hall, the state secretary of Military and Veterans Affairs, said the grants to expand two of the state's four veterans cemeteries were a reflection of North Carolina's reputation for stewardship.

"We look forward to working with the General Assembly to ensure that the state is able to continue maintaining and improving these facilities in the future so that our deceased veterans and their families can be honored and given the respect they earned and so rightly deserve," Hall said.

The Western Carolina State Veterans Cemetery will receive about $3 million for a smaller expansion, officials said. The grant would provide 1,300 pre-placed crypts, 564 in-ground cremated remain sites and 1,360 columbarium niches, officials said. Approximately 124,000 North Carolina veterans and their family members are eligible for burial in the cemetery.

Other state veterans cemeteries are in Jacksonville and Goldsboro.

"North Carolina is proud to be the most military and veteran friendly state in the nation and I want to thank our federal partners at the Department of Veterans Affairs as well as North Carolina's congressional delegation for working to ensure that we can continue to serve our veterans and their loved ones," Hall said.

Military editor Drew Brooks can be reached at dbrooks@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3567.

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