Category Veterans Cemeteries

Northern California Veterans Cemetery in Igo Adds 2,000 Columbaria Niches

Five new columbaria have been constructed, each containing 400 niches, at CalVet’s Northern California Veterans Cemetery in Igo.  This means that the 154 families who have been waiting specifically for the columbaria now have the opportunity to inter their loved ones. 

Graphic with CalVet logo and image of field that is partly burned.

Prevention Pays Off: CAL FIRE and CalVet’s Proactive Measures Shield Northern California Veterans Cemetery from Blaze 

IGO — Every day, CAL FIRE’s defensible space inspectors, foresters, and firefighters work to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires that can otherwise threaten communities and natural resources. Proving the power of prevention and planning, these teams can point to a proactive fuel reduction project around CalVet’s Northern California Veterans Cemetery last year as evidence […]

Group shot of the Veterans Division team at the CalVet Leadership Summit 2022.

VETERANS DAY IN THE BOOKS? AT CALVET, EVERY DAY IS A NEW PAGE WHEN IT COMES TO SERVING THEM

The parades and picnics are over. Speeches made and proclamations read. The American flags that lined the streets throughout the country and California are neatly folded, stored until the next national holiday. Veterans Day – America’s annual day of thanking veterans for defending this country and the freedoms our Constitution guarantees – is in the […]

Famous photo of Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry.

GO AHEAD, MAKE MY VETERANS DAY: WHEN FORT ORD WAS A SPRINGBOARD TO HOLLYWOOD

From World War I through the first Gulf War, Fort Ord was a U.S. Army base known for producing soldiers. Today, it is home to CalVet’s California Central Coast Veterans Cemetery and also to Cal State University-Monterey Bay, among other things. For a few years in the early 1950s, however, the outpost on the Monterey […]

A photo of flowers set up against inurnments at the California Central Coast Veterans Cemetery.

MEMORIAL DAY SERVICE RETURNS TO CALVET CEMETERY IN SEASIDE AFTER TWO-YEAR PANDEMIC ABSENCE

On a cool and windy recent May morning, Catherine Figueroa donned a camouflage coat and ball cap as she arrived at the California Central Coast Veterans Cemetery in Seaside. She drove to the top of the hill, to the Columbarium that contains the ashes of her husband, Army veteran Pedro Figueroa, who died in October […]

PUTTING MEMORIAL DAY INTO FOCUS AMID THE BLUR OF A 3-DAY WEEKEND

When Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act in 1968, it ultimately transformed three holidays and one day of remembrance – the latter being Memorial Day – into three-day weekends. The underlying reason? Travel, barbecues, picnics, and such all benefit the national, regional, and local economies. It became the unofficial start of the summer tourism […]

SEVEN SCORE AND 17 YEARS AGO, LINCOLN GAVE AMERICA’S MOST MEMORABLE ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG

November 19, 1863, 157 year ago, just over four months after one of the deadliest, bloodiest, and defining battles of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln arrived in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He spent the night in David Wills’s home in downtown Gettysburg, less than a mile away from the cemetery that would be dedicated the following […]

GROUNDBREAKING SET FOR NATIVE AMERICAN MEMORIAL PLAZA THAT WILL SHOWCASE “THE GIFT” STATUE AT RIVERSIDE

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) National Cemetery Administration will break ground on the plaza of the American Indians Veterans Memorial on Friday, September 25 at the Riverside National Cemetery.  It will be the first major monument honoring U.S. indigenous veterans located at a VA national cemetery. The Memorial will feature a statue named “The […]

ANSWERS TO VETERANS’ BENEFITS QUESTIONS JUST A CLICK AWAY WITH CALVET’S UPDATED RESOURCE BOOK

Are you a service member or among the nearly 1.6 million veterans living in California? Do you want to buy a home? Do you want to return to school or find a new career in the civilian world? Do you need help navigating the VA’s medical system, or need information about any of your other […]

COVID-19 WILL MAKE ITS MARK ON MEMORIAL DAY CEREMONIES AT CALVET’S VETERANS CEMETERIES THIS YEAR

For many years – up to and including 2019 – Napa County Boy Scouts placed a flag at each of the gravestones in the cemetery at the Veterans Homes of California-Yountville for Memorial Day in honor of those buried there. That will not happen this year, though. Nor will Memorial Day traditions at the other […]