Onondaga County Veterans Memorial Cemetery: Free Burial

The Onondaga County Veterans Memorial Cemetery, 4069 Howlett Hill Road, Syracuse, dedicated in 1987, is run by County Parks; the Veterans Service Agency decides who is eligible. Free. Local Law 1 of 2019, effective May 1, 2019, replaced the $500 a person burial fee with "No Fee ($0.00)" for eligible veterans, spouses and dependents, and refunded fees paid in advance for burials not yet held. Who. The Parks page and the agency's burial letter say: honorably discharged veterans with five years' proof of residence in Onondaga County (a veteran who moved away proves the earlier residence); the legal spouse, with a separate adjacent plot if also a veteran; and dependent children under 18, or disabled before 18. The letter's own footnote defines a veteran more broadly: a service member who died on active duty, a reservist or Guard member entitled to retired pay at death, and a veteran discharged under conditions other than dishonorable. A family turned away over a general discharge should ask the agency to apply that definition. How. Send the 2026 application with the DD-214, the marriage licence and proof of five years' residence (tax or utility bills) to the Veterans Service Agency, 421 Montgomery Street, Syracuse 13202. Committals are held in the Gordie Lane Memorial Chapel. VA supplies the veteran's headstone; a spouse's or child's marker is the family's, a flat Barre granite marker to the cemetery's standard. To schedule, call the cemetery at 315-484-1564 (staffed Tuesday to Thursday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.). See also the New York entry on burial of veterans without means, which the County owes separately under General Municipal Law 148.