Montana State Veterans Cemeteries

Section 10-2-601 puts the Montana Board of Veterans' Affairs in charge of the state veterans cemeteries and locates them at Fort William Henry Harrison in Lewis and Clark County, at Missoula and at Miles City, with a cemetery at Columbia Falls in Flathead County and one in Yellowstone County authorised if funding allows. The Columbia Falls cemetery now operates as the Northern Montana State Veterans Cemetery, so the program runs four sites: Fort Harrison, Missoula, Miles City and Columbia Falls. The state has not caught up with itself on that: the Veteran Affairs Division’s own state benefits page still says three cemeteries and names only Fort Harrison, Miles City and Missoula, while the cemetery program page lists Columbia Falls with a manager and a phone number. Use the cemetery program page. The Apsaalooke Veterans Cemetery at Crow Agency is administered by the Crow Tribe rather than by the state. For an eligible veteran the cost is close to nothing. The plot, opening and closing, the headstone and perpetual care are free. Eligible spouses and dependents pay an opening and closing fee, a headstone collar fee and, for cremated remains, a vault, which is why a spouse's interment costs several hundred dollars where the veteran's costs nothing. Eligibility follows the federal national cemetery rules rather than the strict Montana definition of veteran, and the program states it in the federal terms: an other than dishonorable discharge, a sufficient number of years of service for the period served, and legible discharge documentation. There is no Montana residency requirement. Montana is one of a small number of states that will bury a Guard or Reserve member who does not meet the ordinary federal veteran burial test, under the federal Burial Equity for Guards and Reserves Act. That is worth raising with the cemetery manager before assuming a Guard career without a federal activation rules the family out. The Corey Shea Act route is available: a parent may be interred with a service member who died on or after October 7, 2001 as a hostile casualty or from training-related injuries, where the member is interred in a national or state veterans cemetery in a gravesite with space, and has no spouse or child who is or may become eligible for burial in a VA national cemetery. The paperwork is deliberately light. The program asks for a DD Form 214, NGB Form 22, DD Form 1300 or equivalent, a death certificate, an application for interment and a headstone inscription request. Pre-registration before need is encouraged and settles eligibility in advance, which is the single most useful thing a veteran can do for their family here. Two operational details families ask about. A burial service is allotted 30 minutes, of which military honors typically take 8 to 10 minutes. A firing party is required for retirees and active duty and optional for veterans. And the cemeteries run a strict decoration policy: no balloons at any time, artificial flowers only from November 16 to March 15 and either side of Memorial Day, wreaths only in December and January, US flags on graves only at Memorial Day, and nothing over 24 inches tall. The cemeteries are funded partly by a $10 veterans' cemetery fee charged on each set of special veteran licence plates under 61-3-459, which is deposited to the account in 10-2-603.