North Dakota Funeral Honors, Memorial Coin and Burial Medallion

Three small programs in chapter 37-18, all administered by the Department of Veterans' Affairs, sit around a North Dakota military funeral. The commemorative memorial coin. Section 37-18-15 requires the Department to create and confer a coin upon a family member of a deceased North Dakota veteran during military funeral honors. The eligibility list is broad: service on active duty, in the national guard or in the selected reserve with departure under conditions other than dishonorable; completion of at least one term of enlistment or period of initial obligated service in the selected reserve with departure under conditions other than dishonorable, or discharge from the selected reserve due to a disability incurred or aggravated in the line of duty; death while serving; or membership in the commissioned officer corps of the Public Health Service or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or a civilian or contractual group given active duty service determinations under Public Law 95-202. That last limb reaches the Second World War civilian groups, including the Women Airforce Service Pilots. "North Dakota veteran" for the coin means someone who meets those requirements and "who was a resident of North Dakota during any period of the individual's life". Any period. A veteran who lived in Fargo as a child and died in Arizona is inside it. A family member is a spouse, parent, child or other individual related by blood, and any person may purchase a coin from the Department at a cost the Department sets. The honors stipend. Section 37-18-16 requires the Department to run a program reimbursing a veterans' service organization for providing a funeral service at a military honors funeral: the folding of the flag, the presentation of the flag, the presentation of the state coin, the playing of taps and the three volley salute. The reimbursement is up to fifty dollars to one organization per funeral, and is unavailable where the organization has already received federal reimbursement for the same funeral. Subsection 4 settles a question that other states in this catalog answer the opposite way: the veterans' service organization "may authorize the playing of taps on a ceremonial bugle or a high-quality recording during a military honors funeral held in this state". Rhode Island requires a live bugler and forbids a recording. North Dakota, with one veterans cemetery and a great deal of distance between posts, permits the recording. Neither is wrong; they are answers to different problems, and a family that wants a live bugler should ask for one early rather than assume. The burial medallion. Section 37-18-17, created by House Bill 1293 in 2025, requires the Department to establish and administer a program to provide a medallion, a small durable marker attached to an existing headstone or grave marker to indicate veteran status, for a national guard or national guard reserve member not buried in the state veterans' cemetery who does not qualify for another medallion from the state or federal department of veterans affairs. It fills exactly one gap: the Guard member who served a full career without a federalization that would earn a federal marker, buried in a family plot. For the family of a member who died in service there are two plates. The gold star number plate under 39-04-10.14 goes to family members of a service member who died while serving on active duty during a time of military conflict, and once declared eligible the Department may not remove the eligibility. The military sacrifice plate under 39-04-10.17 covers the immediate family of someone who died outside a combat zone while serving honorably as a current member of any branch, active or reserve, the national guard under federal or state control, or the coast guard, where the death was not the result of willful misconduct. Immediate family for the military sacrifice plate reaches a spouse, parent or person in loco parentis, sibling or half sibling, child or stepchild, and grandparent.