Mississippi’s state veterans cemetery will officially open and hold its first funeral in 2011, McComb Lions learned Tuesday.
State Veterans Memorial Cemetery Director Timothy Lockey said the 75-acre cemetery, located between Interstate 20 and Highway 80 in Newton County, will open in spring 2011.
Its construction was funded by a $6.9 million Veterans Administration grant.
“We recently received 12.2 acres (adjacent to the cemetery) from Mississippi State University,” Lockey said. “That land will have our Gulf War veterans memorial to honor our soldiers from Mississippi who died in Iraq.”
Renan Richmond, a Lions member who also sits on the state Veterans Affairs Board, said the memorial will have a photo of the three southwest Mississippi soldiers who were killed in Iraq.
“The cemetery will have white marble upright headstones,” he said. “We’re calling the cemetery ‘The Arlington of the South’ because of the view people will see as they pass by on Interstate 20.
“This is not a fly-by-night project,” Richmond said. “We visited state veterans cemeteries in seven states — we learned a lot.”
Besides the VA grant, Lockey said funding for the cemetery has come from the state and from corporate and private donations.
One of the donors, he said, is the Friends of Mississippi Veterans, which will pay for the construction of a bell tower at the cemetery.
