Ted Krumm, Director
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By Robert Rhoden, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune The Times-Picayune on November 15, 2012 at 5:56 PM Print

Two years after appearing to be dead in the water, St. Tammany Parish's long-sought veterans cemetery will become a reality. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has awarded the state $8.3 million to create a cemetery for veterans on 75 acres of land donated by the Louisiana National Guard at Camp Villere near Slidell, state officials said. The project is slated to be completed by the end of next year.

Baton Rouge National Cemetery is closed to new interments.
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
The site will be visible from Interstate 12, with the cemetery entrance located just outside the gates of Camp Villere, said Robin Keller, press secretary for the state Department of Veterans Affairs. Twenty-one acres will be utilized in the initial phase of the cemetery, she said.

While the state veterans agency said it announced the grant more than a week ago, the good news apparently only began circulating among St. Tammany veterans in the past few days.

"We're tickled pink. It's something we've been wanting for a good while," Len Watts, commander of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 5735 in Slidell, said Thursday. Watts, who retired from the Navy as a captain, said he heard about the grant on Wednesday in an email from Willie Brice, president of the St. Tammany Parish Military Affairs Advisory Council.

"This is something that the veterans are certainly looking forward to," Watts said. "They just hope it can be completed before their time comes."

According to a news release from Keller, work has already begun at the site, and a groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for Dec. 5.

Building Systems Construction will build the cemetery, and Meyer Engineering, LTD was previously awarded the contract for architectural and engineering services, the release said.

The cemetery will provide for the needs of approximately 100,000 veterans and their families who live in and around Southeast Louisiana, it said.

The grant will fund 100 percent of the initial cost to build the cemetery, which will include 2,579 pre-placed crypts, 273 gravesites for cremated remains and 480 columbaria niches.

Lane Carson, a Covington resident who heads the state's Department of Veteran Affairs, and others have been pushing for more than a decade to get a veterans cemetery built in St. Tammany. The nearest veterans cemetery sites are in Baton Rouge, which is full, and Biloxi, Miss.

In 2010, the cemetery project appeared to be, at best, a longshot in St. Tammany. Leesville had received V.A. funding for a cemetery, and St. Tammany was behind other areas on a priority list at the time. In 2011, the Parish Council accepted 60 acres of donated land near I-12 and Louisiana 1088 northeast of Mandeville in hopes that the cemetery would get funded.

"After many years of planning and in close partnership with Louisiana National Guard, I am pleased that this project is now a reality," Carson said in the release.

The state currently operates two other veterans cemeteries: Northwest Louisiana Veterans Cemetery in Keithville near Shreveport, and Central Louisiana Veterans Cemetery just outside Fort Polk in Leesville. Plans are underway to secure additional cemetery locations in and around northeast and southwest Louisiana, the department said.

Watts said one of his VFW brothers will be buried Friday in Biloxi National Cemetery. "That's the nearest thing that's available," he said.

Slidell resident Alton Rock, a member of Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 697 and American Legion Post 374, said Thursday that he was unaware of the V.A. funding.

"It would be great to have something close to home," the 63-year-old Army veteran said. "I feel that it's real important for all of us in southeast Louisiana."

It will allow veterans in the New Orleans area and beyond to remain close to their families after they die, he said.

"We're dying off rather quickly ... from the Vietnam era," Rock said. "The World War II veterans are getting real thin, and we're right behind them."