Veterans Commemorate New State Cemetery
MEDICAL LAKE — Veterans gathered Wednesday to help mark the state’s first veterans cemetery planned for the Medical Lake area.
Eighty acres will eventually be developed and will include a cemetery and administration buildings as well. Roughly 170,000 veterans in Eastern Washington and North Idaho qualify to be placed in the new cemetery, a place to be remembered, and honored.
“There was nothing in Eastern Washington or within the northern Idaho area to honor those veterans, from a promise made by Abraham Lincoln that is we would provide for our veterans, and their widows, and their orphans,” Richard Cesler, director of Eastern Washington State Veterans Cemetery said.
Groundbreaking is set for spring of 2009 and the cemetery will open Memorial Day of 2010. It will be the first veterans cemetery in the state of Washington and many say once finished it will equal a national monument.
