Veterans cemetery dedication Nov. 9
By Steve Herring
Published in News on October 26, 2015 1:46 PM
Dedication ceremonies for the Eastern Carolina State Veterans Cemetery are scheduled for Monday, Nov. 9, at 2 p.m.
"We are done with everything," said Bill Royall, vice president of Design-Build Services at Daniels and Daniels Construction Co. that built the cemetery. "We are in the inspections process. We have actually been in the inspections process for about a month now. We finished up about a month early. Despite the fact we could have been handicapped (by recent heavy rains) everything worked out really well.
"We are waiting on an inspection from the state of North Carolina. We've had the state electrical inspector come, but the design team has already come done its inspections."
The cemetery site straddles both sides of Long's Plant Farm Road just off U.S. 70 East and cost $4.1 million.
The current phase is developing only 20 acres of the about 60-acre site.
Royall said he receives telephone calls every day or so from veterans or veterans organizations asking about the cemetery.
Sightseers aren't unusual either, Royall said.
As Royall and Del Crawford, president and owner of Crawford Design Co. of Fayetteville, were doing a walk around Friday morning a car drove through the cemetery.
"People can't understand why you have gates on a cemetery," Royall said. "But for right now it is for controlling the sightseers.
"But a lot of people are interested -- very respectful. There is nobody out here doing what would be considered a problem, but we have a lot of sightseers who are very interested in this project."
Crawford, whose company did all of the civil and landscape design for the cemetery, said he also has heard many positive comments.
He also worked on the design of the Sandhills Veterans Cemetery in Spring Lake, where his father is buried, when he worked at another firm.
"The uniqueness of this is that it originally was a farm field," Crawford said. "What you see now is a totally different landscape to what you saw prior to construction because it was a flat farm field. All of the different contours were part of the design to make it a little more interesting.
"There were certain requirements for the burial areas. Typically crypts don't go in until someone is buried. But the veterans' requirement, all of the crypts have to be in place."
There are 1,882 double crypts. On the back side near the committal shelter is the columbarium niche (for urns holding the remains of people who have been cremated).
"All of the burials are actually shelter-oriented instead of at the burial site itself," Crawford said. "So that is a little bit different than a normal cemetery."
It is a state cemetery because the Wayne County area's population size does not meet the threshold for it to receive national designation.
"It has been a great project for Daniels and Daniels," Royall said. "We feel privileged. I think we all entered into this project knowing the significance of it in a military town like Goldsboro is, and the relationship Goldsboro has with Seymour Johnson Air Force Base to be able to provide a veterans cemetery right here.
"We knew the significance of it. We felt like we were doing something really important so that has been the motivator for getting stuff done."