Ground broken on Veterans cemetery

September 24, 2003  Winfield Daily Courier
Reprinted with permission

After decades of sitting vacant, the ground northeast of the College Avenue and H.N. Banner Road intersection has found its purpose as a veterans cemetery.

After several years in the planning stages, state and local officials, along with representatives from veterans organizations, gathered Tuesday morning to break ground for the cemetery.

The idea of a cemetery had been discussed since around the time officials learned part of the former Winfield State Hospital and Training Center would be transformed into a veterans home. That idea became a reality in 1999 with the passage of Senate Bill 19. The bill authorized the Kansas Commission of Veterans Affairs to establish a system of veterans cemeteries and to fund the cemeteries when federal money became available.

“What strikes me as truly remarkable this morning is that this acreage has been here for over 100 years relatively untouched, quietly and patiently awaiting its purpose. Now at this designated time, its metamorphosis to a sacred place is about to begin,” Kansas Veterans Home Superintendent Jim Hays said as he addressed the crowd.

Hays related a story of a Kansas farm boy who enlisted in the Navy and boarded the USS Arizona, which was destroyed at Pearl Harbor, marking the beginning of World War II. To this day, Pearl Harbor remains a place “to find solace. It is now a shrine to the men who lost their lives on that eventful day.”

The land where the cemetery will be located is not unlike Pearl Harbor, Hays said.

“Since 1887 this nearly 40-acre tract of land which is owned by the state of Kansas has mostly laid dormant. Deemed too rocky for tilling or drilling for farming, it is nonetheless a rolling hill, with an amazing vista to the west. It is about to become a State of Kansas Veterans Cemetery,” Hays said. “Vacant for 116 years, undisturbed and left to its natural beauty of wildflowers and grassland, it will now become sacred ... A space with infinite possibility, it has now found its calling.”

Work on the initial phase of a veterans cemetery in Winfield should be completed within a year, Hays said.

Sen. Greta Goodwin, D-Winfield, introduced by veterans commission chairman Jack Fowler as a “driving force” behind the establishment of the Kansas Veterans Home and cemetery, also addressed the crowd. It was a monumental event for Goodwin, she said.

“This was a dream and a great wish for me since the day that Gov. (Bill) Graves signed the legislation at our own Memorial Park here in Winfield, to establish the Kansas Veterans Home on the premises formerly occupied by the Winfield State Hospital and Training Center,” Goodwin said. “It was probably the highest mountaintop that I have ever had in my 12 years in the legislature.”

Goodwin recalled the time when she and other officials walked the ground around the veterans home considering sites for a cemetery. The original area they looked at on the east side of the home was not the one the state would eventually choose, Goodwin said, but they did find the right spot.

Lawmakers dragged their feet on the cemetery plan, Goodwin said, but colleagues who believed in the concept kept pushing, and the bill passed the legislature in a nonpartisan manner.

“Their votes made our dreams be realized, that each veteran would be provided a final resting place that would reflect the dignity, the honor and the respect that they have earned,” Goodwin said. “This is more than a cemetery. This is our state recognizing the price of freedom and the peace for which we are very grateful.”

Veterans home officials have projected about 550 interments per year, giving the cemetery a 20-year operational expectancy.