Be a part of VA's Veterans Legacy Program

VA’s National Cemetery Administration (NCA) has launched an educational program to get students and the public involved in learning about – and documenting the stories of – those buried in the 135 national cemeteries across the country. The Veterans Legacy Program is the result of a veterans survey where responders indicated a desire for more preservation of the memories of their deceased comrades.

Ron Walters, interim undersecretary for memorial affairs and considered the architect of the Veterans Legacy Program, says the agency found “a unique opportunity to expand our memorialization mission” in working on the program. A year and a half in development, it was rolled out around Memorial Day at two pilot cemeteries, Beaufort National Cemetery in South Carolina and Riverside National Cemetery in California.

Interactive history lesson plans have been developed on an age-appropriate basis from middle school to college, and correlating with core curriculums in the states in which they’re being rolled out. The program is proactively reaching out to teachers and researchers, even holding a teaching workshop in California. The goal is to enable students to learn about the veterans buried in the cemetery nearest them, and the wars they fought, through research and cemetery visits. The likelihood that a veteran is buried fairly close to his or her hometown makes this an exercise in local history; in fact, a tagline for the Veterans Legacy Program is “Local Legacy, National Heritage.” Walters says they’ve gotten “very good response” from schools.

The students will likely need help with both the research and the visits, and Walters says there is “no greater resource at the local level than the (veteran) service organizations” – including The American Legion. Posts or individual Legionnaires can reach out to schools as guides or docents through the cemeteries, or provide oral histories for the students.

The Veterans Legacy Program continues to develop and will ultimately cover all NCA cemeteries. In June, NCA partnered with the American Battle Monuments Commission to work with its cemeteries. The next major program rollout is scheduled for Memorial Day 2017.

To learn more about the program, visit www.cem.va.gov/cem/legacy.