ELWOOD – The head of the Department of Veterans Affairs joined local veterans and others Saturday at a ceremony in Elwood commemorating the 50th anniversary of the National Cemetery Administration.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis Richard McDonough spoke at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood.

“There’s no more appropriate place more appropriately named to celebrate the National Cemetery Administration’s 50th anniversary,” McDonough said.

While the NCA is 50 years old, the nation’s veterans cemetery system dates back to President Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.

“Some things remain constant. The honorable selfless service of our veterans has not changed over time.”

—  Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis Richard McDonough

McDonough and others at the ceremony, including Matthew T. Quinn, who oversees the 155 national cemeteries as under secretary of memorial affairs, spoke of Lincoln’s role in starting the national cemetery system. The ceremony included Lincoln reenactor Randy Duncan of Carlinville reciting the Gettysburg Address, the speech given by Lincoln to honor the soldiers who died at the Battle of Gettysburg.

“Some things remain constant,” McDonough said. “The honorable selfless service of our veterans has not changed over time.”

McDonough spoke at length about two soldiers with local roots for whom memorials have been erected at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery.

One was Tech. Sgt. Sator “Sandy” Sanchez from Joliet, an aerial gunner in World War II whose body was never recovered after his B-17 bomber crashed in Germany in what McDonough said was Sanchez’s “66th and last mission.”

The other was 1st Sgt. George Theodore Hyatt, who served in the 127th Illinois Infantry during the Civil War and received the Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Vicksburg. Hyatt’s remains were removed from a Lockport cemetery and interred at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery when it opened in 1999.

McDonough said 615,000 Americans died in the Civil War.

Quinn talked about how the war and Lincoln changed the way the country treated the remains of soldiers and veterans.

“If you go back to 1862 during the horrors of the Civil War, the dead where they fell that’s where they were buried – buried by fellow soldiers trying to give them a fitting end,” Quinn said. “President Lincoln in 1862 said we have to do better.”

Quinn said the first 12 national cemeteries were established that year, and there were 88 by 1873.

Today, he said, the Veterans Affairs has established the Veterans Legacy Memorial, a digital platform that can be found on the VA website (va.gov/remember) and provides information about each of the 4.8 million veterans interred in national cemeteries.

“Going forward, we will continue to keep our veterans’ memories alive through the Veterans Legacy Memorial,” Quinn said.

The ceremony was part of an open house in which the public was invited to visit Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery to learn more about it.

Keeping alive the memory of veterans buried at the cemetery mattered to those who attended.

Denise Carson of Crest Hill, a veteran of the Women’s Army Corp., said she comes to the cemetery often to remember her late Uncle Howard Jensen, who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

“We came today because we are here to honor our fallen and remember their names,” Carson said.