Alaska has the largest number of veterans per capita in America. One of the most important things for families of these soldiers is ensuring their service is honored, particularly after death. With Alaska’s two national cemeteries sometimes difficult to access and reaching capacity, a recent land sale is paving the way for a new state veterans cemetery. KDLG’s Chase Cavanaugh has more.
On Thursday, officials with the Alaska Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs announced the signing of a land sales agreement for a package for 320 acres near Fairbanks. The plot of land will be used to construct the Alaska Interior Veterans Cemetery. Democratic State Representative David Guttenberg was one of the key supporters of the new cemetery. He said the idea came about when he was approached by the wife of Rick, a marine he looked up to when he was young. According to Guttenberg, she told him them Rick was buried in Anchorage and she wanted her husband to “come home.”
“There was no national cemetery or veterans’ cemetery here in the interior, so I started looking into it, and I found out that Alaska was not eligible for another national veterans cemetery, but there was a new program that they put in place that you could have a state cemetery that was sanctioned as a national place of honor. So I started working on that, and that was in, I guess, ’05.”
In 2009, Senator Charlie Huggins of Wasilla sponsored a bill that, when it was passed, established the new cemetery as well as an Alaska Veterans Cemetery Fund. The legislature would later appropriate $1 million for the project as well as receiving $5 million from the federal government. Further funds were authorized in 2013 when searching for a plot of land, which Guttenberg says was more difficult than expected.
“The state put out a request, did anybody have land available? The Reese property was the only land that met the criteria. It’s not like just clearing trees and digging a hole. This is a manufactured cemetery, so they’ll do landscaping, they’ll do concrete subgrade, all kinds of things. It’ll kinda look like an Alaska version of Arlington.”
Guttenberg says the new cemetery won’t just serve as another place to inter deceased veterans, but also provide better access to families than Alaska’s two national cemeteries.
“There’s two national cemeteries in Alaska. One’s in Sitka and it’s pretty full, and Sitka is very hard to get to for most of the rest of the state. The other is on Fort Richardson, which is behind the gate, so it’s very restricted access, and awkward, and of course hard to get to for the rest of the state as well. Fairbanks will change that dynamic. The cemeteries are built to national criteria, and hopefully, there will be a lot more people staying at home.”
Construction is set to begin on Alaska’s Interior Veterans Cemetery this fall, and is expected to be completed in 2015.