Expansion coming to Coastal Bend State Veterans Cemetery
The Coastal Bend State Veterans Cemetery has secured $9 million to fund an expansion, adding thousands of new crypts and columbaria niches.
Once the project is complete in spring 2025, the cemetery will have the capacity to serve as the final resting place for veterans for another 10 years before new land is needed.
The Texas Veterans Land Board, which is responsible for the four state-run veterans cemeteries in Texas, celebrated the new project with a ground breaking Friday. The state office also manages veterans homes and provides veteran land loans.
The project includes the addition of 3,130 crypts, 1,250 columbaria niches, landscaping and irrigation improvements, road improvements and the addition of U.S. Space Force flags and seals.
Sidewalks at the cemetery form a five-pointed star separating four burial sections and an assembly area forming a circle around the star. Additional burial sections are currently at the northern and southern sides of the circle, including a section for buried cremated remains.
The new crypts, used for traditional burials, will be spread into three new sections added east and northwest of the circle.
The new columbarium walls, with space to hold urns of cremated remains, will be built beside the current columbarium, located by the entrance road south of the circle.
Funding for the project comes primarily from the National Cemetery Administration and Veterans Benefits Administration.
The Coastal Bend cemetery is the second-busiest of the state-run veterans cemeteries, handling about a quarter of the 2,700 annual burials. The state-run cemeteries in Corpus Christi, Killeen, Abilene and Mission serve Texas veterans who live outside of the urban areas where the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has national veterans cemeteries in Dallas, San Antonio, Houston and El Paso.
"We operate these cemeteries exactly the same way the nationals do and we're meant to plug the geographic gaps in between those national cemeteries," Texas State Veterans Cemeteries Program director John Kelley said.
The Texas Veterans Land Board plans to open an additional cemetery in Lubbock.
Since the Coastal Bend cemetery opened in 2011, it has buried more than 5,700 veterans and family members. Veterans can share a columbaria niche or burial plot with a spouse, child under 18 or an adult child under the care of the veteran.
Almost 10% of those interred in the cemetery are World War II veterans.
Burial benefits, including the space, opening and closing of the grave, a government headstone or marker, care of the grave and a burial flag for the family, are free for veterans.
"In Texas, we do not charge for anything," Kelley said. "Once those remains arrive at the cemetery, there's no cost at all. We do the exact same thing for the families — for the spouses and eligible family members."
The cemetery includes traditional burials where a coffin is placed in a crypt buried in the ground with the grave marked by a headstone, as well as spots for cremated remains. Cremated remains can be placed in a columbaria niche, with the name and the information of the deceased veteran inscribed, or buried in the ground and marked with a headstone.
There is also a garden for families who wish to scatter cremated remains. If the family chooses to scatter remains, there is also space on a memorial wall for the name of the veteran to be inscribed.
Since 2015, the Texas Veterans Land Board has held services for unaccompanied veterans, inviting the public to honor deceased veterans who have no identified kin. The program has interred over 200 unaccompanied veterans across the state, including 60 at the Coastal Bend cemetery.
"It's very special to us because it's veterans being there for that veteran so they're not being buried alone," Kelley said.
U.S. Army veteran Ruben Guevara was one of the attendees who came out to celebrate the expansion Friday. Guevara, who served in Vietnam, said the cemetery is important to him as a veteran from a family of veterans.
He has friends who are buried at the cemetery and also comes to attend unaccompanied veteran burials.
"There are a lot of veterans that aren't well financially," Guevara said. "This gives them an opportunity to have a place. I love this place."
Nueces County Judge Connie Scott spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony.
"These improvements not only allow us to have more burials here, but more importantly, it keeps our Coastal Bend veterans close to home for their families and gives family members an opportunity to visit and honor their Texas veterans," Scott said.
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This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Coastal Bend State Veterans Cemetery begins expansion
