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Zach Wamp
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Staff Photo by Patrick Smith An area across from burial sites sits open, available for use at the Chattanooga National Cemetery. To make room for more veterans, the cemetery is hoping to add new crypts and is planning for a vault-style wall for cremated remains.
Chattanooga National Cemetery planners are taking their first steps to make sure there's plenty of room for veterans.
Chattanooga Cemetery Director Paul Martin met Wednesday with a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs representative from Washington, D.C., and a memorial supervisor with the department in Atlanta to plan for the addition of thousands of new crypts to the existing 120-acre property.
The cemetery staff also discussed the design and placement of a 1,000-niche columbarium -- a wall that houses cremated remains identified by an engraved plaque.
"Primarily today was just to look at it, get some tentative ideas on how they want it to be, how many niches, possibly to expanding it to 2,000 or 3,000 niches in the future," Mr. Martin said.
Plans for expansion at Chattanooga's cemetery are an important step since only two of Tennessee's five national cemeteries are open for new burials.
The 9.8-acre Knoxville National Cemetery closed to new burials in August 1990; the 64.5-acre Nashville National Cemetery closed in January 1992; and the 44.2-acre Memphis National Cemetery closed in January 1993.
Only Chattanooga and the 99.7-acre Mountain Home National Cemetery in the Tri-Cities area are still accepting burials. Across the country, only 65 national cemeteries still have room.
Ronnie Williams, head of the Chattanooga Area Veterans Council, said the fear of not having enough burial sites at national cemeteries comes up regularly among the 53 veterans group that associate with the council.
"It is important to us," he said. "They have additional spaces but even those will fill up. At some point, there's not going to be space, and we're concerned about that."
Chattanooga plans
In Chattanooga, new stone crypts could be installed next summer, allowing the cemetery more room than traditional grave sites and speeding up burial preparations, Mr. Martin said.
The stone crypts are installed at a depth of nine feet, which allows cemetery workers to bury spouses and family together by sealing each casket within a stone vault, one atop another underground, he said.
The crypts need three to four feet in width and seven to eight feet in length, smaller than current gravesites, which require five feet in width and 10 feet in length.
But those feet add up. The first phase of crypt installation would add 1,000 to 1,100 new sites in an area that normally would hold only 460, he said.
The second phase of crypts likely will not begin until the 2011 fiscal year and will add thousands of crypts, he said.
At the cemetery's current rate of 600 new gravesites annually, adding sites to the existing land should keep it available for funerals until 2045, said U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn.
Rep. Wamp said he has worked to expand the cemetery for 11 years and considers adding land to the site one of his "legacy issues" of his congressional service. Rep. Wamp is leaving Congress to run for governor of Tennessee.
In 2008, the congressman pushed a House bill that required the Veterans Administration to study the possible acquisition of 15 acres of property adjoining the cemetery. The study showed there were 26 different land owners, businesses and rights-of-way for Norfolk Southern Railroad involved with the 15 acres, Rep. Wamp said, and buying and preparing the land for the cemetery would cost at least $6 million.
On Wednesday, the Senate passed a bill that will require VA to report plans on expanding the cemetery after it reaches capacity in 2045, he said.
"The question is then, while we can, while we're still able to still acquire 15 acres, can we extend the life of this?" Rep. Wamp said.
Ed English, an Air Force veteran and managing partner at Lane Funeral Home, said he has both a professional and personal interest in the cemetery's capacity.
For a time, there were rumors the cemetery was running out of space, as other national cemeteries had, he said. But meetings last summer confirmed the Chattanooga cemetery's plans for expansion and informed people about the current capacity.
"That was very good news to me as a funeral director and as a veteran," he said. "It's a well-maintained cemetery. It's an honor to be buried among other veterans."
CEMETERY HISTORY
On Dec. 25, 1863, Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas, "The Rock of Chickamauga," issued General Orders No. 296 to create a national cemetery in commemoration of the Battles of Chattanooga on Nov. 23-27, 1863. Gen. Thomas selected the cemetery site during the assault of his troops that carried Missionary Ridge and brought the campaign to an end. The land originally was appropriated, but later purchased, from local residents Joseph Ruohs, Robert M. Hooke and J. R. Slayton.
The site Thomas selected was about 75 acres of a round hill rising with a uniform slope to a height of 100 feet. It faced Missionary Ridge on one side and Lookout Mountain on the other. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant established his headquarters on the summit of the hill during the early phase of the four-day battle for Lookout Mountain.
Cemetery facts
* There are 135 National Cemeteries listed with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
* Chattanooga National Cemetery has 120 acres and nearly 47,000 people buried on site
* The cemetery performs between 1,000 and 1,100 burials a year
* About 600 new graves are opened for burials a year
Area National Cemeteries:
Tennessee
* Knoxville National Cemetery
* Nashville National Cemetery
* Memphis National Cemetery
* Mountain Home National Cemetery
Georgia
* Georgia National Cemetery in Canton, Ga.
* Marietta National Cemetery
Alabama
* Mobile National Cemetery
* Alabama National Cemetery in Montevallo, Ala.
* Fort Mitchell National Cemetery in Seale, Ala.
Source: Department of Veterans Affairs
Todd South covers courts and the military for the Times Free Press. He has worked at the paper for three years and previously covered crime and safety in Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia. Todd’s hometown is Dodge City, Kan. He served five years in the U.S. Marine Corps and deployed to Iraq before returning to school for his journalism degree from the University of Georgia. Todd previously worked at the Anniston (Ala.) Star. Contact Todd ...
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