"United States national cemetery" is a designation for 146 nationally important cemeteries in the United States. A national cemetery is generally a military cemetery containing the graves of U.S. military personnel, veterans and their spouses but not exclusively so. There are also state veteran cemeteries.
The best known national cemetery is Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, outside of Washington, D.C.
Some national cemeteries, especially Arlington, contain the graves of important civilian leaders and other important national figures. Some national cemeteries also contain sections for Confederate soldiers.
The National Cemetery Administration of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs maintains 130 of the 146 national cemeteries. The Department of the Army maintains two national cemeteries, Arlington National Cemetery and United States Soldiers' and Airmen's Home National Cemetery. The National Park Service (NPS) maintains 14 cemeteries associated with historic sites and battlefields. Additionally the American Battle Monuments Commission maintains 24 American military cemeteries overseas. These exceptions are noted on the list below.
Read more about United States National Cemetery: History, List of National Cemeteries
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, national and/or cemetery:
“I feel most at home in the United States, not because it is intrinsically a more interesting country, but because no one really belongs there any more than I do. We are all there together in its wholly excellent vacuum.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“The United Nations cannot do anything, and never could; it is not an animate entity or agent. It is a place, a stage, a forum and a shrine ... a place to which powerful people can repair when they are fearful about the course on which their own rhetoric seems to be propelling them.”
—Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)
“The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“Disney World has acquired by now something of the air of a national shrine. American parents who don’t take their children there sense obscurely that they have failed in some fundamental way, like Muslims who never made it to Mecca.”
—Simon Hoggart (b. 1946)
“The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn.”
—John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla)