Nebraska Veterans Cemetery System

Nebraska runs two state veteran cemeteries. The first opened at Alliance, in Box Butte County, in January 2011, a twenty-acre site with burial fields for casketed and cremated remains. The second opened at Grand Island in September 2025, offering the same services plus a columbarium. Section 12-1301(1)(a) describes the system as consisting of a facility at Grand Island and permitting one in Box Butte County. Eligibility is federal, not state. Section 12-1301(7) directs the Director of Veterans' Affairs to provide lots for the interment of deceased veterans "as defined by the National Cemetery Administration of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs", and for those veterans' spouses, minor children and unmarried adult children who were physically or mentally disabled and incapable of self-support. That means the rules are the ones in 38 U.S.C. 2402 rather than anything Nebraska has written, and the Department of Veterans' Affairs publishes them in that form: death on active duty; discharge under other than dishonourable conditions with no minimum service for those who entered as enlisted on or before September 7, 1980 or were commissioned on or before October 16, 1981; twenty-four months or the full period called for those who entered later; reserve and Guard veterans entitled to retired pay; and reserve and Guard members who gained veteran status through a call to active duty by executive order and served the full period. A minor child unmarried and under twenty-one, or under twenty-three in full-time education, is eligible. There is no Nebraska residency requirement in the statute. The director may make rules including requirements for proof of residency, and does administer the system for Nebraska veterans, so a family should ask rather than assume either way. The money is where this system is unlike the rest of the file. Section 12-1301(2) creates the Nebraska Veteran Cemetery System Endowment Fund, and subsection (2)(b) states that no revenue from the General Fund shall be remitted to it and that the Legislature shall not appropriate or transfer money out of it for any other purpose. The principal cannot be spent at all; only investment earnings move, quarterly, into a separate Operation Fund that pays for operation, administration and maintenance. That is a deliberate structure and it has a consequence worth knowing. The cemeteries are funded by gifts, by federal construction assistance from the National Cemetery Administration, by investment earnings on a fund the Legislature has bound itself not to raid, and by licence plate fees. Sections 60-3,124(3)(b)(ii) and 60-3,125 send seventy-five percent of the forty dollar fee for personalised message disabled veteran and Purple Heart plates to the Nebraska Veteran Cemetery System Operation Fund. A veteran who buys a personalised message plate is directly funding cemetery upkeep. Subsection (5) explains why the Grand Island cemetery took so long. For a facility in a county with a population over one hundred thousand, the director may only apply for federal construction assistance once the endowment's projected annual earnings plus the projected value of agreements with political subdivisions or private entities are sufficient to fund that cemetery's operation. Alliance, in a county well under that threshold, faced no such test under subsection (4). Section 71-1382.01 covers a related situation. Where cremated remains go unclaimed, a crematory authority or funeral establishment may give the identifying information to VA, to the Nebraska Department of Veterans' Affairs or to a veterans service organisation to determine whether the remains are those of a veteran, spouse or dependent and whether they are eligible for burial in a veteran cemetery. Information submitted to the state department is not a public record. After reasonable efforts to locate the authorising agent, and after the remains have been held for a year unclaimed, a veterans service organisation may provide disposition with a funeral at a veteran cemetery. Memorial services with full military funeral honours are offered for all veterans at both cemeteries.