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Cooper: What ‘if your son’ were there?

A Scout carries a bundle of flags past headstones at the Chattanooga National Cemetery after he and other Scouts placed more than 50,000 flags on the graves of veterans prior to Memorial Day in 2018.
A Scout carries a bundle of flags past headstones at the Chattanooga National Cemetery after he and other Scouts placed more than 50,000 flags on the graves of veterans prior to Memorial Day in 2018. A Scout carries a bundle of flags past headstones at the Chattanooga National Cemetery after he and other Scouts placed more than 50,000 flags on the graves of veterans prior to Memorial Day in 2018.

By Clint Cooper 4 min read

Visitors who stroll the 121-acre grounds of the Chattanooga National Cemetery to pay tribute to loved ones today may take for granted the rolling expanse has always been as pristine as it is on this Memorial Day.

In fact, it has not been. And it took a group of local residents and a literal act of Congress 75 years ago to make sure it would be.

The local cemetery is administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs just as are 136 other national cemeteries in 40 states and Puerto Rico. The Department of the Army maintains two national cemeteries, and the Department of the Interior through the National Park Service maintains 14.

Of those maintained by the Department of the Interior, three are in Tennessee, including Fort Donelson in Dover, Shiloh National Cemetery in Shiloh and Stones River in Murfreesboro.

So why not Chattanooga? That’s where the local effort came in.