Happy Holidays from USMA Matt Quinn 

Dear Subscriber,

The holiday season is here and I want to extend my best wishes to you and your family for a joyous and peaceful holiday. This has been a busy, historic year for the National Cemetery Administration, so I’d like to recap some of our accomplishments.     

In September, NCA marked 50 years of providing final honors and perpetual care for our nation’s heroes. Since 1973, NCA has grown to 155 VA national cemeteries with more than 4.1 million Veterans at rest. This year we also surpassed $1 billion in grants awarded since 1978 through our Veterans Cemetery Grants Program to a total of 122 state, tribal, and territory cemeteries.

This fiscal year, NCA’s Scheduling Office handled more than 283,000 calls and our cemetery teams completed nearly 138,000 interments. We delivered more than 427,300 Presidential Memorial Certificates and provided approximately 333,500 grave markers for Veterans in non-VA cemeteries. By adding approximately 5 million Veterans resting in private cemeteries and 300,000 in DOD cemeteries, we doubled the size of our online Veterans Legacy Memorial to 10 million pages.

This video commemorates many of our accomplishments from this year: 

NCA Year in Review 2023

I am especially proud that NCA also maintains its status as #1 in customer service, according to the American Consumer Satisfaction Index. Taking care of Veterans and their families is what we do best. Of course, we could not fulfill our mission without our dedicated partners, so thank you for being a part of NCA’s family.

Through this holiday season, I ask you to take a moment to thank a Veteran for their service to our nation, and please keep in mind the brave, dedicated servicemembers on duty throughout the world.

Thank you for all you do for our Veterans and our country! I look forward to working with you in 2024.

Happy Holidays!

Matt Quinn, Undersecretary for Memorial Affairs