The Department of Veterans Affairs has added pages for roughly 5 million more former service members to its Veterans Legacy Memorial online project, including thousands of veterans interred at public and private cemeteries outside the VA National Cemetery Administration’s system.
Coming just ahead of Veterans Day, VA officials said the expansion doubles the size of the site, bringing the total number of vets memorialized to roughly 10 million, about one-third of all veterans dating back as far as the Revolutionary War.
The department was able to add so many veterans to the site by collecting information on those buried at private and non-VA cemeteries who received a headstone, marker or medallion from the National Cemetery Administration since 1996, according to VA Under Secretary for Memorial Affairs Matt Quinn.
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“Since becoming under secretary of memorial affairs more than two years ago, I’ve had numerous requests for family members for this type of opportunity. And again, as of Veterans Day 2023, we have made this a reality,” Quinn said during a call with reporters Tuesday.
The Veterans Legacy Memorial launched in 2019, initially as a static website that gave basic details on 3.7 million veterans buried in the VA’s 155 national cemeteries, such as name, grave location, and photo of gravesite.
The project was…
