SCBIZ Daily Staff

COLUMBIA -- The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has awarded a $2.53 million construction contract for the initial phase of development of the new Fort Jackson National Cemetery in Columbia to International Public Works LLC of North Charleston.

The new 585-acre cemetery will be located in Richland County just east of the city of Columbia and south of Interstate 20 on property donated by the Fort Jackson Army post, the VA said. 

The VA has selected Gene Linxwiler as the first director of Fort Jackson National Cemetery.  After retiring from the Navy in 1999, Linxwiler joined the VA’s National Cemetery Administration as a director intern at Willamette National Cemetery in Portland, Ore.  Linxwiler was then assigned to Natchez National Cemetery in Mississippi. 

He was also director of Fort McPherson National Cemetery in Nebraska from October 2004 to September 2006. Before taking the position at Fort Jackson, Linxwiler was the director of Fort Bliss National Cemetery in Texas and Fort Bayard National Cemetery in New Mexico.  

The VA expects construction of a 15-acre area to begin this summer and burials to begin there later this year. The cemetery staff will work initially from a temporary office, committal service shelter and equipment facility building until construction is completed.  That area will include 1,400 full-casket gravesites and 1,100 in-ground cremation burial sites.

When the cemetery’s 50-acre first phase of development is finished, it will contain 5,000 full-casket gravesites, including 4,200 pre-placed crypts and about 2,000 columbarium niches. It will provide burials for more than 170,000 veterans and their families who live in central South Carolina.

Veterans with a discharge issued under conditions other than dishonorable, their spouses and dependent children are eligible for burial in a national cemetery. Other burial benefits for eligible veterans include a burial flag, a Presidential Memorial Certificate and a government headstone or marker — available even if they are not buried in a national cemetery.

In the midst of the largest expansion since the Civil War, the VA operates 125 national cemeteries in 39 states and Puerto Rico, 33 soldiers' lots and monument sites.  More than 3 million Americans, including veterans of every war and conflict, from the Revolutionary War to the current Global War on Terror, are buried in the VA’s national cemeteries.