Homelake cemetery issue taken to Denver

Seen from the air, the prepared expansion area is marked by a road and bounded on one side by the Colorado State Veterans Cemetery and by vacant land on the other three. The buildings and residences of the historic veterans center are at the left of this photo and a small subdivision is at the top, near a crop circle that is leased to a farmer by the veterans center.

HOMELAKE — Former State Sen. Lewis H. Entz, a tireless advocate for the Colorado State Veterans Center, headed to Denver Monday to continue his battle for expanding the cemetery there.

Entz took issue with figures stated in a letter from Vicki Manley, director of the Division of State Veterans Nursing Homes and Mindy Montague, administrator of the Colorado State Veterans Center at Homelake.

Manley and Montague wrote that the estimated cost to expand and maintain an additional 47 acres, including design and construction “is approximately $500,000.”

Entz said there are 1.75 acres that can be used for the expansion, which would allow 150 new burial spaces. “If 47 acres were to be developed, it would mean tearing down the domiciliaries.”

“They tried to make a fool out of me when they said the $500,000 was for 47 acres which we don’t have.”

At present, a corner has been prepared for expansion, Entz said, and that area would provide an additional 100 burial plots.

“On Memorial Day, there were nine plots left; now, there are three,” Entz said, noting that the time would soon come that no one could be buried there, despite the work he and other volunteers have already done. “It’s ready to go,” he said, “all it needs is a sprinkler system and grass.”

Entz estimated that work could be done for another $6,000.

“We need room and developing the corner won’t ruin the esthetics or the history,” he said.

He said he has been told that $500,000 is needed and will cover lights, curb and gutter and sidewalks, “which will destroy the cemetery’s historic status.” In addition, he said, the state has advised him that the $500,000 “has to be volunteer money.”

Manley and Montague wrote that, because the new legislation makes the project’s development contingent on gifts, grants and donations, the department feels it would be a disservice to our veterans to begin taking reservations for cemetery plots, given the uncertain time frame of the project.

“We would not want to put our veterans and their families in the untenable position of paying for a reservation for a grave site that does not yet exist.”

Entz asked, “so it’s better, then, to have no grave sites, at all?”

While in Denver, he will be speaking with Estelle Cole at the Historical Society and with the Division of Parks and Wildlife.