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I’m Robert Bissonnette. I work at Calverton National Cemetery as a caretaker. I started here in 2013. (more…)
Tag: Calverton National Cemetery
The following is a list of this weekend’s Memorial Day parades and ceremonies to honor the men and women who lost their lives in defense of this country.
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A man salutes the flag at a Southold Town Memorial Day parade. (Katharine Schroeder file)
In keeping with tradition, Memorial Day will be observed Monday with a series of parades and ceremonies across the North Fork and Riverhead Town.
The following is Monday’s schedule of events:
• Riverhead’s annual combined veterans parade begins at 10 a.m. at the World War II memorial at the corner of Pulaski Street and Osborn Avenue. It will proceed down Main Street and return to the memorial at about 11 for a ceremony.
• The official Southold Town Memorial Day parade, held this year in Southold village, will start at 10 a.m., proceeding from Boisseau Avenue and Main Road to Griswold-Terry-Glover American Legion Post 803 at Tuckers Lane, where a ceremony will be held.
• Orient Fire Department’s parade will start at 7:30 a.m. at the Main Road firehouse. The route will run along Tabor Road to Orchard Street, then Navy Street, Village Lane, Main Road and back to the firehouse.
• Mattituck Fire Department will hold a ceremony at the war memorial at Pike Street and Wickham Avenue at 8 a.m. That event will be followed by a parade through the Love Lane business area, ending at the Pike Street firehouse.
• A dockside service is scheduled for 8 a.m. at the Greenport railroad dock. The procession will line up in the Adams Street parking lot behind the Arcade at 7:45 a.m., then move to the dock for the service. Refreshments will follow at the Third Street firehouse.
• The annual observance at Calverton National Cemetery will be held at 1 p.m. in the cemetery’s assembly area.
This woman was not alone as thousands flocked to Calverton National Cemetery on Memorial Day. (Credit: Grant Parpan)
The more than 242,000 interments over the past 36 years at Calverton National Cemetery are the biggest reason so many Long Islanders spend their Memorial Day in Riverhead Town. (more…)
JOSEPH PINCIARO PHOTO | The US Veterans Motorcycle Club of Long Island.
A few hundred people came out to Calverton National Cemetery on a sunny Monday afternoon for the annual Veterans Day ceremony.
The ceremony was nearly derailed this year due to a federal government shutdown, master of ceremonies Dennis Krulder said, though it went on as scheduled at the nation’s largest national cemetery, spanning over 1,000 acres.
Guest speakers included Representative Tim Bishop (D-Southampton), Riverhead Councilman John Dunleavy, and Joe Sledge, public affairs officer at the Veterans Affairs Northport Medical Center.
Bishop recognized the Calverton cub scout pack 404 for projects they had done with veterans recently, conducting flag retirement ceremonies on their behalf and adopting some veterans as pen pals.
Sledge, a peacetime veteran himself, pointed to the good deeds done by some of his colleagues in the crowd – acts as simple as driving disabled veterans from place to place, to planting a garden to be able to sit by and enjoy – as evidence of some ways vets are giving back to their own at the VA.
Quoting from “The Prophet,” Sledge ended with the following: “‘Your friend is your needs, answered. He is your field, which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.’
“Everyone in this area- in this beautiful cemetery right now who served in U.S. armed forces – we thank you. We thank you for being our board and our fireside. We thank for your feeding us when we came to you hungry. And we think you most importantly for peace.”
Click through for some photos from Monday’s ceremony below. If you attended, feel free to add in your own.
JOHN NEEELY FILE PHOTO | Calverton National Cemetery.
While large portions of the federal government remain ground to a halt as federal lawmakers stand across the bargaining table from one another, Calverton National Cemetery has been unaffected since the day the so-called “shutdown” began Oct. 1.
But sometime next week, that could change.
If no deal is reached in Washington, D.C., two-thirds of the staff at Calverton National Cemetery, the country’s largest burial ground for veterans, will be furloughed Oct. 22. In that event, the cemetery’s work force would drop from 100 to just over 30, resulting in delayed interments.
While veterans affairs could be considered a nonpartisan issue — especially compared to Obamacare, the issue at the heart of the shutdown — Congressman Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) said last week that he doesn’t see the logic in passing legislation that would before a final deal is made.
“There have been a series of bills Republicans have brought to the floor to reopen a slice of the government,” he said in a conference call Friday with members of the media. “What we say is, ‘Let’s reopen all of the government.’
“Should we allow burials to slow down at Calverton? Of course not. But the answer should be to reopen the entire government. Not pick and choose which parts we want to,” Mr. Bishop said.
The cemetery is funded through the National Cemetery Association, which falls under the purview of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The department is funded in two-year cycles — unlike most departments, which are funded year-by-year — so operations at Calverton, and much of the VA, have so far not been impacted by the impasse to the same degree as the rest of the federal government.
The Calverton cemetery conducts approximately 30 to 40 burials per day on its 1,045 acres, about 800 of which need to be maintained on a regular basis.
Kristen Parker, a spokesperson for the NCA, said that in the event that the shutdown hits national cemeteries, the government would “do whatever it can not to delay a burial. And it would likely be a day or two. Not weeks.”
But many veterans have already had enough. Just after the shutdown hit, a group of vets arrived in Washington to find that they had to remove barricades at the World War II memorial, which had been shut down. And last weekend, Reuters reported that veterans groups took it one step further, removing the barricades and placing them on the lawn of the White House.
“I don’t even know if the government would feel bad [if burials were delayed],” said Frank Bania, who runs Boots on the Ground NY, a veterans group that organizes PTSD support groups, motorcycle cavalcades and other efforts to help veterans.
The former commander of Riverhead VFW Post 2476, Joe Edler, said, “I have a funny feeling this should be settled fast, or else I think they’re going to hurt a lot of veterans.”
If no deal is reached by the end of the month, Mr. Bishop said, the country may not be able to pay out $12 billion in active duty and veterans benefits.
Four days after political gridlock in Washington shut down large swaths of the federal government, it remains unclear what the effects have been — or could be — on the local level, largely because it remains to be seen how long the game of political chicken will last.
Larger projects such as the Mattituck Inlet dredging and beach replenishment, which is in its formative stages but faces a Jan. 15 deadline to be finished, could be facing delays as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been dealing with worker furloughs.
And for some small businesses such as the fledgling Moustache Brewing Co. in Riverhead, efforts to cut through red tape to seek federal label approvals could prove to be an even more time consuming process than usual, as the U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau permit processors can’t work.
Others – such as Calverton National Cemetery and Brookhaven National Lab – have a couple weeks before funding sources start drying up, officials said.
“At this time, we are open for business, unrestricted,” said Mike Picerno, director of Calverton National Cemetery.
But on Oct. 15 – when a large portion of the cemetery’s funding dries up – Congressman Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) said that two-thirds of the staff is set to be cut, leaving about 30 of the cemetery’s 100 employees on the job. The result will be delayed burials for veterans, leaving maintenance work at the hallowed grounds an afterthought.
Lauri Spitz of Moustache Brewing Co. said she and her husband are in the process of opening up the Riverhead brewery, but before they can sell any beer they need to get label approval for their keg collars from the U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. But even applying for the labels online is impossible amid the shutdown. Instead, Ms. Spitz will have to go the old fashioned route, filling out the applications with pen and paper.
“If this ends up going on, I’d guess the processing of new applications will be a back burner kind of thing,” she said.
Anthony Nappa finds himself in the same boat.
Mr. Nappa, winemaker at Raphael and Anthony Nappa Wines, both in Peconic, said he submitted three labels for approval to the TTB about a month ago. Even when the government is functioning normally, he said, the process usually takes between one and two months.
“The system takes a long time regardless, so this doesn’t help,” Mr. Nappa said. “Until they open up again it might get even more backlogged.”
Macari Vineyards ended up being a little more lucky, hearing from the TTB on Sept. 30, exactly one day before the government shut down.
Beyond the beverage industry, Mr. Bishop said on Friday that his office had not yet even received confirmation from the Department of Homeland Security about furloughs at Plum Island, which employs about 400 people. But Homeland Security’s science and technology directorate, which administers the island, has seen 630 of its 650 employees furloughed.
So a skeleton staff is only likely to be in place, Mr. Bishop said.
Joe Gergela, executive director with the Long Island Farm Bureau, said a handful of farmers whose farms were badly damaged during Superstorm Sandy, were working with the National Resources Defense Council – which operates under the United States Department of Agriculture – to engineer fixes to prevent future damage. Gergela said it’s “uncertain if the engineers or the people with jurisdiction over that are going to be on the job.”