Avenue of Flags at San Joaquin Valley National Cemetery in Merced County, California

July 23, 2025 - WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs on Tuesday announced seven grants to educational and research institutions totaling $2,195,992 to memorialize Veterans interred in VA national cemeteries as part of the National Cemetery Administration’s Veterans Legacy Program initiative.

The grants announced today will support the creation of documentaries, lesson plans, instructional aids and other educational materials regarding the lives and accomplishments of Veterans.

VA established VLP in 2016 to memorialize Veterans through educational outreach and to connect students, educators, and citizens with VA national cemeteries. The program has so far awarded dozens of grants and engaged with more than 15,000 students. Veteran biographies, images and other content are also preserved on VA’s Veterans Legacy Memorial site, where individual web pages commemorate the lives and service of more than 10 million U.S. Veterans interred in U.S. and overseas cemeteries.

“We are grateful for our collaborations with schools and non-profit organizations across the country to help preserve Veterans’ legacies,” said Acting Under Secretary for Memorial Affairs Ronald Walters. “These grants will help ensure future generations continue to learn about the remarkable men and women interred in VA national cemeteries.”

The grantees announced today were selected following a rigorous review process. They include:

• National History Day, Inc., $361,721
  National History Day will identify fifty teachers who live within 90 miles of a VA or VA-funded cemetery to each select two Veterans who served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II. These teachers will then guide students to research and write biographical profiles for publication on the Veterans Legacy Memorial.  Student projects will conclude with visits to each Veteran’s grave site, where they will give eulogies based on what they learned about their lives. The program estimates that the 50 teachers selected for this program will reach more than 62,000 students in ten years.

• Loyola Marymount University, $350,000
  The LMU Digital Veterans Legacy Project is an educational initiative designed to honor U.S. Veterans interred in national cemeteries through collaborative research and digital storytelling. Partnering with local schools, community organizations, ROTC programs, and national cemeteries, the project integrates veterans’ narratives into K-12 and university curricula. Building on the success of previous NCA grants, DVLP has engaged 524 students and produced 291 Veteran biographies. For 2025-2026, the project will train five Teacher Ambassadors to develop and implement three curriculum-aligned lesson plans each, and lead students in researching local veterans and creating digital media projects. LMU will take a community-based participatory methods approach to identifying Veterans by asking educators and community members to select those who have significant connections to their local communities. This project promotes civic engagement, honors Veterans’ legacies, enriches student learning, and will continue to create additional veteran-related learning resources for students and educators.

• Kennesaw State University Research and Service Foundation, $341,881
  The proposed project represents a continuation and expansion of a project that curates the life histories of Veterans who served in the U.S. military in the late 1940s and 1950s who subsequently participated in the Civil Rights Movement. Building on initial work in 2024-2025 which featured World War II Veterans in Georgia, this proposal focuses on Vietnam-era Veterans in the Southeast. KSU will develop an immersive portfolio of educational and community outreach tools emphasizing community connection, including storyboards and supporting materials uploaded to the Veterans Legacy Memorial, a traveling Vietnam-era museum exhibit, a self-guided walking tour of a NCA cemetery, and community events that promote connection between students, community members, and Veterans. This project will preserve the stories of Veterans who contributed to our nation’s history in an extraordinary manner and promote student and community engagement with state and federal cemeteries in the Southeast. The project focuses on life histories of Veterans and interviews with next-of-kin. Kennesaw will do case identification, recruitment, and data collection, resulting in 967 cases reviewed, 341 cases confirmed to likely meet eligibility criteria, 25 next-of-kin identified and contacted, and eight interviews performed so far. The interviews are the subject of a traveling museum exhibit to be created by KSU Museums, Archives, and Rare Books, which will be created in summer 2025. Presentations based on this project have been accepted at two conferences.

• U.S. Korea Global Strategy Foundation, $324,999
  This project will increase knowledge and awareness of the “Forgotten War” by creating ten new secondary social studies instructional modules, guiding student research that can be uploaded into VLM and delivering professional development to secondary teachers. Distributed nationally and internationally, the modules focus on the significance and purpose of national cemeteries and the experiences and sacrifices of Korean War Veterans. The project includes instructional modules that guide student research to locate biographical information for Korean War Veterans buried in local national cemeteries.

• Research Foundation of the City University of New York, $280,000
  This project will develop a professional development seminar for 17 K-12 educators drawn from the greater New York metropolitan area. Participants will familiarize themselves with historical resources and other research materials to produce educational materials which relate to the stories of the Veterans interred in Cypress Hills National Cemetery. Students will generate biographies of Veterans interred at the cemetery that will be published to the Veterans Legacy Memorial. Participants will also be given a guided tour of Cypress Hills National Cemetery where they will become acquainted with the history of the cemetery, visit the important monuments located there, and familiarize themselves with the stories of the individuals interred there.

• University of Central Florida, $274,439
  The UCF project will extend the memorialization of Veterans interred in National Cemeteries in Florida, with a focus on Cape Canaveral National Cemetery. UCF will partner with the Brevard County Veterans Memorial Center in Merritt Island, Florida and the Museum of Military History in Kissimmee, Florida to identify families of Veterans interested in providing oral history interviews. Educational materials will be created that are derived from these interviews. UCF will work with six Veterans Legacy-experienced educators to create lesson plans for 150 to 200 students during the 2025-2026 school year. UCF will also work with their partners to identify the families/comrades of 12-15 Veterans buried in Cape Canaveral National Cemetery or other Florida national cemeteries. They will digitize family photos, personal letters, commendations and medals, and other records to create source packets. UCF will also create mini podcasts of interviews with Veterans’ families. The video bios, podcasts, and other deliverables will be used in classroom teaching and in educational traveling cemetery tours. Photos and other information compiled will be added to VA’s Veterans Legacy Memorial.

• West Virginia Humanities Council, Inc., $262,952 This project expands upon the geographical and academic impact of prior Veterans Legacy Grants Program awards, which have produced 30 Veteran biographies in a prior year grant and are creating 26 new Veteran biographies in the current grant. Students at Grafton High in Taylor County, University High in Monongalia County, and — for the first time — Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College in Logan County will conduct original primary source research into the lives of West Virginia Veterans and create short biographies to be published on the Veterans Legacy Memorial. Commemorative events will be held near Memorial Day to showcase student work. This project will expand upon prior projects and will compile data on 71 World War II Veterans to incorporate into a digital exhibit.