Veterans' cemetery running short on space

FORT SILL, Okla. (AP) -- Cemetery space here is running short for veterans wanting to be buried among other American military men and women. <br><br>Historic Fort Sill has one inactive and five active

Monday, April 24th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

FORT SILL, Okla. (AP) -- Cemetery space here is running short for veterans wanting to be buried among other American military men and women.

Historic Fort Sill has one inactive and five active cemeteries within its boundaries. Three of them are reserved for the descendants of Apache prisoners of war, while another is set aside for Comanche tribal members.

The largest one is the 130-year-old Old Post Cemetery, with 6,323 graves. But only about 65 grave spaces remain, said Melvin Kerchee, Fort Sill's cemetery administrator.

The cemetery holds frontier calvarymen and veterans of World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam.

Kerchee said about 10 to 15 people who are eligible for burial there die every month. He said that means Old Post will be out of grave sites within the year.

"We saw this problem back in 1981," Kerchee said.

Dennis Hergenreth, installation engineer in charge of Fort Sill property, said the rate of burials are increasing because of the number of World War II and Korean War veterans who are dying.

Hergenreth said he wants the cemetery expanded by 400 gravesites, pushing into where a small parking lot is located. The secretary of the Army denied the last expansion request, made 20 years ago.

"The expansion would allow us enough time to overlap with the national cemetery," said Hergenreth.

The new national cemetery is scheduled to open in Lawton in 2002.

Oklahoma City-based Poe and Associates have been contracted to plan and design the cemetery off Interstate 44 near Elgin. It will be built in 10 phases, beginning with a 60-acre tract that will include 14,000 graves and 2,500 below-ground niches for cremated remains.