Millions Spent To Accommodate Growing Demand For Veteran Burial Plots In New Jersey
By Cleve Bryan
NORTH HANOVER, NJ (CBS) – As New Jersey commemorates Veterans Day this year there are about 17,000 fewer Vets in the state than last year.
Demand for burial spaces has enabled the only state veteran cemetery, the BG William C. Doyle Veterans Memorial Cemetery, to acquire $17.5 M in federal grants for improvements.
Twenty-thousand, four hundred and five graves are being rehabilitated, 4,800 above ground cremation niches have been constructed and almost 11,000 double-depth concrete crypts were buried in the ground.
"We are always looking at what our future needs might be," says Ray Zawacki, Deputy Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.
The state cemetery average 13 burials per day and is constructing facilities to accommodate ceremonies and well as help visitors locate buried service members and their wives.
Construction on the new structures is expected to be complete by summer 2015.
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