Republican lawmakers and vets call for veterans' cemetery here

 

Thursday, October 26, 2006

By TOM WROBLESKI

Republican lawmakers joined with Staten Island veterans yesterday to call on the state to fund a veterans' cemetery here.

"This is not about a cemetery," GOP City Councilman and state Senate candidate Andrew Lanza said at the Battle of the Bulge memorial at Wolfe's Pond Park, Huguenot. "This is not about convenience. This to honor our vets. That's the bottom line."

The Department of Veterans Affairs has said the New York area doesn't qualify for a new cemetery because of extant veterans' cemeteries in Calverton, L.I., and Burlington, N.J. But many of the Island's estimated 30,000 vets say those facilities are too far away.

Lanza (R-South Shore) was joined yesterday by Rep. Vito Fossella (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn), GOP Assembly candidate Anthony Xanthakis and more than two dozen military veterans.

Fossella said that building a veterans cemetery here is "the one true way to honor" borough vets. The state, he contended, could step in and fill the "void" left by the VA, although current law prohibits state funds from being spent on a VA cemetery.

Lanza said that, if elected, he would introduce a bill to change that.

Xanthakis, who is running for the 60th Assembly District seat, said he would push for a similar measure in the Assembly, if elected.

"It's the right thing to do for Staten Island, and the right thing to do for our vets," Xanthakis said.

West Brighton resident Victor Prevosti, a World War II vet who chairs the cemetery committee for the United Staten Island Veterans Organizations, presented a design by borough architect David John Carnivale for a veterans' mausoleum that could be situated on 14 acres of land.

Prevosti said space for the facility could be set aside on a 100-acre parcel of land near the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin at Mount Loretto, Pleasant Plains, which the state Department of Environmental Conservation is considering purchasing.

"We have to stop the DEC from taking over that land," he said.

Lanza and Fossella agreed that a parcel could be set aside there for a veterans' cemetery.

"It should be on the table," Lanza said. "It's sizable. It fits the bill."

The DEC declined to comment on the proposal.

 

 

Tom Wrobleski may be reached at wrobleski@siadvance.com. Read his polit.bureau blog at http://www.silive.com/newslogs/politics/.

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