VA moving to let living veterans prep their online memorial pages

Veterans Affairs planners expect to expand their Veterans Legacy Memorial platform by the end of this year to allow living veterans to prepare their own tribute pages with personal details of their time in service, officials said Monday.

The five-year-old project — which allows family members to update online memorials of deceased veterans — has grown to include nearly 10 million veterans interred in VA-run cemeteries, Department of Defense sites and thousands of private cemeteries.

VA Undersecretary for Memorial Affairs Matt Quinn said he has been pleased with the progress in recent years but has also heard from veterans who want to prepare their own tributes to better capture their memories of military life.

“By the end of the year, we expect to have that live,” he said. “Then the veteran … can go and fill out the information on their service, what they want their family or others to be aware of. And upon the veteran’s passing, that page will go live.”