From Air Force Times:
“VA moving to let living
veterans prep their online memorial pages”
Veterans Affairs planners expect
to expand their Veterans Legacy Memorial platform by the end of this year to
allow living veterans to prepare their own tribute pages with personal details
of their time in service, officials said Monday. The five-year-old project —
which allows family members to update online memorials of deceased veterans —
has grown to include nearly 10 million veterans interred in VA-run cemeteries,
Department of Defense sites and thousands of private cemeteries.
VA Undersecretary for Memorial
Affairs Matt Quinn said he has been pleased with the progress in recent years
but has also heard from veterans who want to prepare their own tributes to
better capture their memories of military life. “By the end of the year, we
expect to have that live,” he said. “Then the veteran … can go and fill out the
information on their service, what they want their family or others to be aware
of. And upon the veteran’s passing, that page will go live.”
Veterans would not be able to
have the pages displayed while they are still alive, but would be able to view
it themselves to ensure the information there will be accurate when made
public, officials said. Quinn did not provide any estimates on how many
veterans may be interested in the service. Of the nearly 17 million veterans in
America today, nearly half are 65 or older. News of the expansion comes just days ahead of
Memorial Day celebrations at VA cemeteries and memorial sites across the
country. Quinn said the weekend is the busiest for the National Cemetery
Administration each year, although volunteer and crowd numbers still appear
slightly lower than before the COVID-19 pandemic forced partial closures of the
sites for two years. “We’re not all the way back yet, but we’re getting close,”
he said. “I’d say 75% to 90% of attendees are back in some fashion.”
VA Secretary Denis McDonough is
scheduled to speak at the New York Veterans Cemetery Finger Lakes in Waterloo,
New York, on May 27. The town, dubbed the “birthplace of Memorial Day,” first
marked the holiday in 1866. VA Chief of Staff Kimberly Jackson is scheduled to
speak during ceremonies at Wood National Cemetery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on
May 27. VA Deputy Secretary Tanya Bradsher is scheduled to speak at Baltimore
National Cemetery in Maryland on May 30 as part of the extended holiday
celebrations. Information on events at all VA sites and the online veterans
memorial project is available through the National Cemetery Administration
website.
^ This sounds like a good idea.
To go to the Veteran Legacy
Project go to the following link:
^
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