FAIRBANKS — The local cemeteries are flying American flags for Memorial Day but there are none on the hillside 10 miles north of the city designated as a final resting place for veterans.
It's not for a lack of trying but the veterans' cemetery is still without a home after more than a decade of discussion, a $2 million land purchase and the creation of three master plans.
The schedule has slipped yet again and no one can say how many more years will pass before the cemetery opens or where it will be built.
The latest delay stems from the refusal by the federal Department of Veterans Affairs to allow the state to compete for a multimillion-dollar cemetery construction grant until there is a road on the property, not just a bulldozed trail.
The state doesn't have $1.5 million for this road, so unless contractors, veterans groups and other donors decide to build it themselves, the project is going nowhere.
With no hope of getting money through the state capital budget, the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs is discussing potential land swaps for property on the other side of town owned by the state Mental Health Trust and the University of Alaska.
"If we work a land swap with MHT or UAF, then the construction could be accomplished in the next couple of years if a road is on site," said Verdie Bowen, director of the state Office of Veterans Affairs.
"If we have to build a road to locations on our existing land, we will have to request funds during next year's budget cycle. This could be a longer endeavor than a land swap that has an existing road," he said.
"We are looking at everything in order to build a cemetery in the area," Bowen said.
The proposed swap with the Mental Health Trust, up for review this fall, would be to exchange a portion of the Goldstream Road property for a 100-acre site off the Parks Highway about seven miles beyond Ester.
Early this century, when Fairbanks Rep. David Guttenberg began trying to get the Legislature to endorse a veterans' cemetery, he never thought that it would be this difficult or take so long.
The Legislature dragged it out for years; then access and pollution questions about land on Fort Wainwright forced the state to look at its land holdings near Fairbanks. When the only site big enough for the cemetery within 10 miles of town proved to be heavy with permafrost, the state looked to buy property.
Two years ago, with $2 million from the state capital budget, the state purchased 320 acres from land developers John and Ramona Reeves. The state bought a south-facing slope on a hillside off Goldstream Road close to the trans-Alaska pipeline and Fox.
"I am proud to see this project begin the design phase and I look forward to seeing construction start next summer," former Gov. Sean Parnell said in a press release on July 31, 2014.
The summer of 2015 passed with no construction and it will be the same story this summer. The federal government is to pay for construction of the cemetery — estimated to cost up to $7.5 million — but the VA will not sign off on the project unless there is a good access road through the property.
The VA has a grant program to build veterans' cemeteries if there are no others within 75 miles, and the closest one to Fairbanks is the Fort Richardson National Cemetery in Anchorage, where thousands of veterans have been buried since the 1940s.
Since 1978, the grant program has helped establish nearly 100 cemeteries.
The state will be responsible for operating costs when the cemetery becomes a reality. There is a federal burial allowance of $700 per veteran.
Guttenberg began working on this after the 2002 death of Rick Roethler, who served in the Marine Corps in the 1950s and became a dispatcher at Laborers Union Local 942 in Fairbanks. Guttenberg said that Roethler's widow, Joyce, told him that her husband and others believed that Fairbanks should have a veterans' cemetery.
"It will be done; I couldn't say when," said Guttenberg. "They have a timeline for it. They think it could be done with a land swap in five years, but that's government time. I'm very frustrated with this."
"I have vets who come up to me all the time on the street and say, 'Hurry up.' It hurts that it's taken so long," he said.
Dermot Cole is a Fairbanks columnist. The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.