History: NCA History Blog
NCA historians blog about current events, cemeteries, preservation projects, headstones and monuments, Memorial Day, notable persons and much more. Read our latest blog posts or view the list below.
Featured Blog Post
Jimmy Price
Historian, National Cemetery Administration
Published: April 9, 2025
The flat granite markers for the unknowns inscribed with their place of death and the ship they served aboard would not exist but for the efforts of one resolute sailor who survived the devastating surprise attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor.
On the morning of December 7, 1941, Seaman 1st Class Raymond D. Emory was reading the newspaper aboard the USS Honolulu (CL-48), docked at Pearl Harbor's Navy Yard near Battleship Row, when he heard general quarters sound. Springing up a ladder, he was deafened by machine gun fire when he got topside and thought to himself, "This is a really good drill."
Emory, who manned a machine gun during the attack, was forever marked by what he witnessed. "There hasn't been a day in my life that I haven't thought about that day," he said in a 2015 interview.
Original markers for the Pearl Harbor unknowns only listed the number buried at the site and their date of death. (VA)
A grave marker at the National Cemetery of the Pacific for two unknowns who died aboard USS Arizona during the December 7, 1941, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. (VA)Latest Blog Posts
Les' Melnyk
Senior Historian, NCA
President Abraham Lincoln is one of the most revered figures in American history. Rankings of U.S. presidents routinely place him at or near the top of the list. Lincoln is also held in high esteem at VA. His stirring call during his second inaugural address in 1865 to "care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan" embodies the nation's promise to all who wear the uniform, a promise VA and its predecessor administrations have kept ever since the Civil War.
French Cross at Cypress Hills National Cemetery in Brooklyn
NCA History Program
In 1918, 25 French sailors, who died receiving care at the U.S. Naval Hospital on Brooklyn Navy Yard, were buried in an unused section of Cypress Hills National Cemetery in Brooklyn. Initially, burial of "friendly" foreign nationals was done as a military courtesy. As a result of the U.S. experience in World War I, the Army updated its regulations in May 1933 to formalize burials of allied foreign nationals in national cemeteries. A few months later, this language was revised again to include military personnel of other countries who died while engaged in promoting national defense in the United States. This change encompassed the burial of the French sailors.
Emme Richards
Virtual Student Federal Service
Intern, VA History Office
Theodore O'Hara's elegiac poem, "Bivouac of the Dead" was originally written to honor the Kentucky volunteers who died in the Mexican War (1846–1848). Alongside frequent print appearances, “Bivouac of the Dead” started turning up in cemeteries for the war dead after 1865. Lines from the poem were displayed on painted signboards at the gates and along the paths winding through the grounds. In the 1880s, the Army manufactured a set of seven cast-iron tablets inscribed with passages from the poem to replace the makeshift markers at the national cemeteries in its care. Today, tablets bearing passages from O'Hara's poem can be found in dozens of VA national cemeteries across the country.
List of NCA History Blog Posts
| Blog Post | Date |
|---|---|
| NCA Historic Objects: USS Bennington Monument and Grave Plot | September 21, 2023 |
| NCA Historic Objects: Civil War 6×6 Unknown Grave Markers | August 31, 2023 |
| NCA Historic Objects: Edmund Whitman's 1869 Report on Reburying Union Dead in National Cemeteries | June 15, 2023 |
| NCA Historic Objects: The Veterans Legacy Memorial | May 23, 2023 |
| NCA Historic Objects: Congressional Cemetery Cenotaphs | May 11, 2023 |
| George Ford – Veteran and National Cemetery Superintendent | April 25, 2023 |
| NCA Historic Objects: Dorothea Dix's Monument to Union Soldiers | March 7, 2023 |
| NCA Historic Objects: Funeral Ceremony for Vietnam Unknown | February 3, 2023 |
| Blog Post | Date |
|---|---|
| Halyburton and Grimsley – Story of U.S.'s first POW in WWI | November 23, 2021 |
| Remembering the USS Indianapolis | November 15, 2021 |
| 1973 – When VA took over the National Cemetery System | November 12, 2021 |
| Exhibit – USCT Substitutes in the Border States, Buried in National Cemeteries | November 12, 2021 |
| John Pitzer and the journey to Loutre Island | November 12, 2021 |
| Lincoln and Grant in Lights: The Grand Army of the Republic's 1887 memorial stained-glass windows | November 1, 2021 |
| NCA Monuments Dedicated on Memorial Day | May 1, 2021 |
| The World's Most Intrepid Airman is a Woman: Remembering Katherine Stinson Otero | March 25, 2021 |
| Contrasting Lives: WWI Black Veterans Everett Johnson and Robert Chase | February 27, 2021 |
| Creating a Formidable Force: Colonel Dan T. Moore | February 26, 2021 |
| Trailblazers, Advocates, and the Anguished: Veteran Profiles of the 349th Field Artillery | February 25, 2021 |
