Rep. Katie Porter Calls To Build OC Veteran's Cemetery Now

RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA, CA —Congresswoman Katie Porter of Rancho Santa Margarita, Representative of the 45th district, expressed her support for building the new Veteran's Cemetery in Orange County at Gypsum Canyon in Anaheim Hills this week.

On Thursday, Congresswoman Porter described the need for the cemetery, which has been pushed from Irvine to Anaheim Hills since before 2019. The location they have narrowed in on is best suited to the job for both deceased military and their spouses, she says.

“We have a responsibility to do right by our service members and military families,” Porter wrote in a prepared statement. “The bare minimum we can do for our veterans, who have made tremendous sacrifices for our country, is to give them a final resting place here in our community. We ought to begin construction on a veterans cemetery as soon as possible, and the Gypsum Canyon site in Anaheim Hills is our most viable option. Let's get this done.”

The Veteran's Cemetery location and funding languished since the decision to build it was reached by the Orange County Board of Supervisors in 2019. A location and funding were at last decided upon over the summer.

At that time, Nick Berardino, president of VALOR, or Veterans Alliance of Orange County, said the board's vote to open the cemetery to allied forces represented "one of the best moments of my life."

Read: Veteran's Cemetery Will Be For Fallen Heroes And Spouses

"We fought a war to bring about democracy, to share the American way of life," said Berardino, a Vietnam veteran. "With this proposal to have an Orange County cemetery and a place for our allies to share that cemetery with us is a moment that none of us should ever forget. This is truly a historic moment. I don't know of anywhere else in the United States where that exists."

Since then, the initial location for the prospective cemetery has moved from Irvine, also in Porter's district, to Anaheim Hills and the Gypsum Canyon location. In July, $20 million was earmarked to develop the proposed site.

Over the summer, Supervisor Don Wagner, the former mayor of Irvine, noted that he "got involved in this ... back in 2014" when he was an Assemblyman. "I was co-author with Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva's bill that sought to bring a veterans cemetery to Irvine," Wagner said. The site at that time was the so-called Amended and Restated Development, or ARDA, at the end of a runway at the old El Toro military base, which was ultimately developed into the Great Park.

Bernardino said the cemetery's funding was "a long time coming."

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