New military cemetery the first in North Jersey
On a sweeping bend of Route 94 in Sparta, there is a cleared hilltop marked by plain white grave tablets and uniform rows of small American flags embedded in the ground.
"It's always a little breezy up here, but calm," said John Harrigan. "It's peaceful. Some people come up just to sit."
This was Harrigan's dream. To build a place of honor and serenity, where those who served their country could rest in peace. And in that sacred space, family, friends and strangers could come and quietly reflect on their service rendered and sacrifices made.
The Northern New Jersey Veterans Memorial Cemetery is in the infant stage of becoming hallowed ground. Not many people know about it. It's tucked away up in Sussex County along a country highway. The closest and best landmark to find it is Sussex County Vo-Tech. Traveling south on Route 94 (North Church Road), it's just past the school. Traveling north, it's just before.
A wide, newly paved driveway under a metal arched sign "All Gave Some ... Some Gave All" leads to New Jersey's newest military cemetery.
Eighty veterans are buried there, including two women. Another 150 have pre-purchased plots. The cleared hilltop is only the first section. The rest of the slope and the ground below will be cleared as needed.
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The cemetery is the most significant step in Harrigan's long, interrupted journey to embrace his own war experiences and veteran status.
He was an Army combat engineer in the Mekong Delta region in 1967-8, during the heaviest fighting of the war.
"I was there for the Tet Offensive," he said, referring to the Viet Cong's counter-attack to a massive U.S. troop build-up.
"When I came home from Vietnam, I went to the VA at the Brooklyn Navy Yard," he said. "The doctor says to me, 'You weren't in a real war and you didn't get hurt, so there's nothing we can do for you.' So that was that."
Like many Vietnam veterans, he didn't join the American Legion or VFW. He just went about his life and the lonely pursuit of trying to feel normal.
He got a job with the New York City Transit Authority as collection agent. His Type 2 Diabetes and neuropathy from Agent Orange exposure began to announce themselves as he aged but his first experience with the VA kept him away.
"They're (the VA) much better now," he said.
During the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he was assigned to help secure the Brooklyn Bridge.
"We had seen the planes hit," he said. "That was it for me."
A new war was on, and he'd already served in one, so he retired. And started to think.
"All of us Vietnam vets, we never got a welcome home," he said. "I wanted to give us a place where we could go."
In 2008, he started a Vietnam Veterans Chapter in Sussex County. The first meeting at St. Francis DeSales Church in Vernon drew three men. Now they have 200 members and between "75 and 100 guys" show up there every Thursday. (All veterans are welcome).
His activism grew along with the meetings.
"Its veterans helping veterans," he said. "With support, with the VA, whatever they need."
Even a place of eternal rest.
Last week, Harrigan, cemetery administrator Lisa Permunian and a small army of volunteers were trying to get the property ready for (yesterday's) Memorial Day ceremony.
A "battle field cross" sculpture of empty boots, rifle and helmet was being placed at the foot of the main flag pole as part of an Eagle Scout Project by Devin Reilly, a junior at High Point Regional High School.
He sold engraved pavers to purchase the sculpture and a few hundred more un-engraved pavers to create a wide walkway at the base of the flagpole.
About 60 volunteers from the Bayer pharmaceutical company were planting donated shrubbery and trees.
"We've had a lot of people do things for free," said Harrigan, 69, who lives in Vernon.
Local landscape designer, Mark DeVenezia, cleared and graded the hilltop land, which required the removal of dozens of mature trees and the under-forest growth of unmanaged land.
Attorney Kevin Kelly of Newton, did the extensive legal work pro bono. The survey work was done by Gardell Land Surveying of Franklin.
The streets of the cemetery complex are named after them.
Harrigan didn't name one for himself.
No reason, he said. "I just didn't do one."
But we know the reasons. Humility. Service. The quiet satisfaction of doing something extraordinary without trumpets, plaques or press releases. Pitching in and making a job well-done.
Street name or not, this is Harrigan's baby. He got the idea after visiting a veterans' cemetery in the town of Goshen in New York's Orange County in 2008.
"It was a county cemetery, so I thought, 'Why not here?'" he said. "We don't have a military cemetery in North Jersey."
True. The three open military or veterans' cemeteries in the state are at Finn's Point on the Delaware Bay, Wrightstown, near the Joint Base of McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst and, Beverly, which like Wrightstown, is in Burlington County.
Harrigan went to the Sussex County freeholders and asked if they wanted to start a veterans' cemetery. They did not. But they offered to help.
With $300 of his own money, Harrigan created a 501 (c13), the non-profit designation for cemeteries. Owen Martin of Vernon, another Vietnam veteran, found the perfect spot: the 66 acres the county was holding for the purpose of a shooting range or park.
The county sold the land to Harrigan for $1, and donated $50,000 of the $75,000 he needed to post a bond with the state cemetery board.
"We had to raise the rest," Harrigan said.
By early 2015, everything was in place to allow DeVenezia to fire up the bulldozers and start clearing the land.
"We've come pretty far in just two years," Harrigan said.
And it's just the beginning. Harrigan plans five sections of the cemetery. The first two will have enough room for the coffins or cremated remains of 7,500 veterans.
When Harrigan looks out over the cleared hilltop and still-wooded area of the land the cemetery owns, he sees thousands upon thousands of the plain white tablets, lined in orderly rows. He sees thousands upon thousands of plaques marking the sites of cremated remains.
He also sees something else. The new camaraderie of old service members, joining together to build this place of their own.
Mark Di Ionno may be reached at mdiionno@starledger.com. Follow The Star-Ledger on Twitter @StarLedger and find us on Facebook.
For more information on the cemetery or to donate, call 973896-2460 or go to NNJVeteransMemorialCemetery.org