For weeks, Jennifer Bertelsen noticed an eerie sensation tingle through her while driving home from work.
“I just felt so creepy. I thought they were digging up dead people, and that really isn’t right,” said the first-year biology student, who regularly passes by the Los Angeles National Cemetery on South Sepulveda Boulevard.
Bertelsen said she was mystified by the construction currently taking place in the cemetery. Trucks and tractors are visible from the street, causing some baffled students to suspect that workers are unearthing long-forgotten spirits.
But cemetery representative Mary Jones said that is certainly not the case. It is against the law to relocate coffins; the project’s goal is mere beautification.
“We are re-leveling the cemetery’s ground and placing new sod,” Jones said. “We are also raising and realigning markers.”
Over the cemetery’s 120-year history, Jones said, dirt has shifted, causing many headstones to tilt or sink. Part of the construction process involves removing misaligned headstones, digging new trenches, and then replacing the markers in upright and straight positions.
Of the more than 76,000 headstones in the cemetery, only about 2,000 have been realigned so far, said cemetery director Cynthia Nunez.
Nunez also said the beautification, which doesn’t have a sure completion date, will help to further honor the veterans buried on the site’s 114 acres.
“Our goal is to make the cemetery a national shrine,” Nunez said. “It will be a more park-like setting.”
The current construction is the fourth phase of a project that began about two years ago. The $4.3 million for this phase came by way of the American Recovery Act of 2009, which counts creating jobs and “spurring economic activity” among its goals, according to a government Web site.
The cemetery itself is funded by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, Jones said. The grounds are currently full and provide a resting place only for veterans, their spouses, and their minor children.
According to its Web site, more than a dozen medal-of-honor recipients are buried in the cemetery alongside about 100 buffalo soldiers and two dogs.