South Carolina State Veterans Cemeteries

Section 25-11-80 authorises the Department of Veterans' Affairs to establish, maintain and supervise state veterans' cemeteries. The M.J. "Dolly" Cooper Veterans Cemetery in Anderson is the one in operation. The 2024 change is the reason this entry exists in its current form. 2024 Act No. 153, effective May 13, 2024, deleted subsection (F)(3), which had carried the residency requirement. The Effect of Amendment note in the code says it plainly: the act "in (F), deleted (3), which related to residency requirements." The earlier version had required South Carolina residency at entry into service, during service, at death, or for five years, with a waiver power, and 2008 Act No. 258 had reduced that five-year figure from twenty. There is no residency requirement in the section now. Published summaries still list it, including a residency test with a waiver, and so does the Department of Veterans' Affairs itself: its benefits booklet dated January 7, 2026 still requires residence at entry into service, at death, or for five years unless "the South Carolina Division of Veterans' Affairs" waives the period, naming an agency that became the department in 2019. That is the law before May 13, 2024. What remains in subsection (F) is short. "To qualify for a plot in a state veterans' cemetery, the applicant must be a veteran or a member of the immediate family of a veteran who meets the requirements of this subsection", and "the veteran must have an honorable discharge from the Armed Forces." Honorable. Not other than dishonorable. That is narrower than the veterans homes definition in Section 25-11-720, narrower than the retirement service purchase in Section 9-1-1140(C), and narrower than the driver's licence designation, which accepts general under honorable conditions. A veteran with a general discharge is inside the state veterans homes and outside the state veterans cemetery on the words of the two statutes. There is also no Guard or reserve retiree clause and no activated-reserve clause in the statute, although published eligibility describes both; those, like the National Cemetery Administration rules the section borrows from, come through the definition of immediate family and through department practice rather than from the section's text. "Immediate family" is defined in subsection (A)(2) by reference outward: "those family members who are eligible for burial in a department national cemetery." The state cemetery therefore tracks federal national cemetery family eligibility, which moves when the National Cemetery Administration's rules move. A spouse, an unmarried adult child who was permanently incapable of self-support before reaching twenty-one, and a minor child are inside it federally. Cost. Subsection (I)(1): "The department shall bury the veteran without charge." For an immediate family member, subsection (I)(2) lets the department either set a fee that does not exceed the cost of burial, or accept from the social security burial allowance an amount not exceeding the cost of the burial. The figure commonly published for a spouse or child is three hundred dollars; the statute sets no figure, so that is an administrative rate. Allotment. Subsection (E)(2) requires the department, in the order applications are received, to allot a plot "in the state veterans' cemetery that is closest to the residence of the veteran and has an available plot." With one operating cemetery that provision does little, but it is the rule if a second opens. Subsection (H) puts the family in the veteran's own plot: in a plot allotted to a veteran the department shall bury the veteran and "any member of the immediate family of the veteran if the family member can be buried in a space above or below the veteran." Double depth, not an adjacent plot. Subsection (J) requires a registry of the graves. Establishing a new cemetery takes three approvals under subsection (C): the governing body of the county, the county's delegation in the General Assembly, and the Governor. 2019 Act No. 26 substituted the Governor for the Department of Administration in that list when the Department of Veterans' Affairs was created as a cabinet agency. Section 25-11-85 establishes the Veterans Service Organization Burial Honor Guard Support Fund, which is how a veterans service organisation is reimbursed for providing military funeral honours. It is the funding mechanism behind the honour guard at a private funeral, not a benefit a family applies for. Section 25-1-110 is separate and Guard-specific: the Adjutant General's office presents a South Carolina state flag suitable for use as a burial flag to the family of a deceased South Carolina National Guard member, on application by a family member, where the member served at least one year in the South Carolina National Guard and at death was an active, honorably discharged or retired member. That is a state flag in addition to the federal burial flag, and it is limited to the Guard.