Dedication Saturday for veterans' cemetery in Marana

The third veterans cemetery in the state is being dedicated in Marana on Saturday.

The Arizona Veterans’ Memorial Cemetery — which already has 14 cremations in a columbarium — will be dedicated at 10 a.m.

The public is welcome to the ceremony at 15950 N. Luckett Road, said Dave Hampton, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Veterans Services.

“This is fantastic news for Arizonans, and especially for the Tucson and Pinal County-area veterans and advocates who have championed for this cemetery for more than a decade,” retired Col. Wanda Wright, director of the Arizona Department of Veterans Services, said in a news release.

The Marana cemetery is the 100th state veterans cemetery nationwide to be built under the federal Department of Veterans Affairs cemetery grants program, Hampton said. The program provided $7.6 million for construction of the Marana cemetery.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

The Arizona veterans department will operate the cemetery, which is located on 32 acres. The first-phase will include 1,802 burial plots, 1,638 cremated remains burial plots and 1,920 columbarium niches, according to officials.

The Kai Family Foundation donated the land in 2013 for the cemetery. Marana Councilman Herb Kai and his brother, John Kai Jr., oversaw the donation of land. The property has been in the Kai family since the mid-1940s. The brothers’ late parents, John Kai Sr. and Mamie Kai, were Chinese immigrants who built one of the largest cotton farms in the Avra Valley.

More than half a million veterans live in Arizona. There are between 120,000 and 200,000 veterans in the Tucson area and Pinal County, Hampton said in an earlier interview. Any military veterans with better than a dishonorable discharge, and their spouse, may be buried at a military cemetery.

The other two veterans cemeteries in the state are the National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona in Phoenix and a state facility, the Southern Arizona Veterans’ Memorial Cemetery, in Sierra Vista.

On June 4, a fourth veterans cemetery will be dedicated in Camp Navajo, which is west of Flagstaff.