First veterans services to open Washington Crossing cemetery

More than a decade after it was proposed, the Washington Crossing National Cemetery is scheduled to open today with the interment of the cremated remains of seven veterans.

The first casket burials in the 205-acre cemetery in Upper Makefield Township, Bucks County, will follow tomorrow, Veterans Affairs spokeswoman Josephine Schuda said.

A simultaneous, private service for the seven veterans, and one spouse, will begin at 1 p.m., Schuda said, marking an end to a sometimes tortuous process, complicated by politics, bureaucracy, and the weather.

The region's veterans are "really excited," said Ed Hackett, who served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam and lives nearby in Newtown Township, "and glad to hear that the dust is settled, and all the kinks worked out."

"There's a sense that something great is in the air in Bucks County," said Dan Fraley, the county VA director, who also is a Marine Corps Vietnam vet.

The Washington Crossing cemetery is expected to remain a work-in-progress for the next 60 years, with an ultimate capacity of about 125,000. Already, the cremated remains of 300 veterans are on the waiting list, Schuda said.

But it's not that burial space for veterans is wanting, the VA says. Nationally, the agency has 12 new cemeteries under development or in the planning stages because it wants them in areas with dense veteran populations. An estimated 350,000 veterans live in the eight-county Philadelphia region.

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, then a Republican and now a Democrat, and then-U.S. Rep. Jon Fox, a Montgomery County Republican, introduced legislation calling for a cemetery in the region back in 1998.

What followed was a protracted battle involving veterans, politicians, and 13 competing sites. Then, when the actual digging began last May, construction was set back by one of the wettest periods on record.

Hackett said that for him, the process had been a lesson in democracy.

"I got a whole new education as far as government goes," said Hackett, who recalled attending about 20 municipal meetings at which the project was debated.

He said that at first he was put off by questions about such tedious matters as soil runoff. Eventually, however, he said he came to realize that those very public meetings spoke to why he went to Vietnam.

"This is what the system is all about," Hackett said. "This is a democracy. This is what we fought for."