Connecticut State Veterans Cemetery

Sections 27-122a and 27-122b authorise a state veterans cemetery and set who may be buried in it. The operating cemetery is the Connecticut State Veterans Cemetery in Middletown. What the state provides at no charge is the burial plot, opening and closing the grave, a government-provided headstone including its placement, and perpetual care. The cemetery accommodates full casket burial, in-ground burial of cremated remains, and inurnment in a columbarium. Eligibility reaches a veteran who was a Connecticut resident at death or who was a Connecticut resident when they entered military service, discharged under conditions other than dishonorable. A member of the National Guard or a reserve component with twenty or more years of service who is eligible for military retired pay qualifies, as does a reserve component member who was activated for federal service. Spouses and dependent children may be buried with the veteran. Dependent children means unmarried children under twenty-one, or under twenty-three if a full-time student. There is a second, smaller cemetery. The Colonel Raymond F. Gates Memorial Cemetery at Rocky Hill serves residents of the Connecticut veterans residential programs on that campus. It is not an alternative a family chooses; it exists for people who died while in the state's care. Section 27-120 is a separate provision worth knowing about for a family with an unrecovered loss. If a person who served in time of war died in service of disease or wounds, was killed in action, died in prison or was lost at sea, and the body was never brought home, or was reported missing in action and never heard from, the Commissioner of Veterans Affairs will on proper application cause a marker or soldier's headstone to be erected in a cemetery or public place in the municipality where the deceased lived. The statute caps the state's cost at fifty dollars, a figure that has not moved in a very long time and that the department administers within its own arrangements. No disability rating affects any of this, so a rating filter never hides this entry. Pre-registration is the practical advice. Establishing eligibility while the veteran is alive spares the family from assembling discharge documents in the days after a death, and it is the single thing that most often goes wrong.