Federal shutdown forces Calverton National Cemetery to cancel Veterans Day ceremony

Calverton National Cemetery said it has canceled its annual Veterans Day Ceremony due to lack of federal funding after it furloughed maintenance workers.

The cemetery in eastern Suffolk County announced the news in a social media post on Wednesday.

"It is with great regret that we announce that due to the ongoing federal government funding lapse, it is necessary to cancel the 2025 Veterans Day Ceremony previously planned for Calverton National Cemetery," the post said.

Even if the shutdown, now in its 38th day on Friday, were to end soon, the cemetery no longer has the time necessary to prepare the grounds to conduct a proper ceremony, the post said.

It is one of the nation's largest federally run cemeteries and includes 1,000 acres of wooded land with more than 300,000 veterans and family members interred on its grounds.

Due to the government shutdown, "it was necessary to furlough the team members who perform grounds maintenance and set permanent headstones and markers," the cemetery said in a social media post.

Cyndi Ventura, president of the support committee for Calverton National Cemetery, which organizes the annual Veterans Day ceremony, said the group "regrets" the cancellation in a statement emailed to Newsday on Friday.

"Our national cemeteries are shrines to our nation’s heroes and there is special meaning in holding these ceremonies on those sacred grounds," Ventura said. "However, the most important thing to all of us is that Veterans receive the tributes they have earned through service and sacrifice, so we wanted to communicate the cancellation as broadly as possible so the Calverton National Cemetery community could make plans to pay their respects to Veterans in other ways on this very meaningful holiday."

Both Calverton and Long Island national cemeteries said that they remain open to visitors between dawn and dusk seven days a week, but staff may not be on hand during all normal business hours.

About 300 people attended last year’s ceremony in Calverton, including representatives of veterans’ groups who traveled long distances.

The cemetery said it hopes to see attendees for its Memorial Day Ceremony on May 25, 2026.

Representatives for Long Island National Cemetery in western Suffolk County, another federally run veterans cemetery, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The government shutdown made history as the longest in the nation's history on Wednesday at 36 days. The last shutdown stretched from Dec. 22, 2018, to Jan. 25, 2019, during President Donald Trump's first term.

About 31,000 federal civilian workers live in Nassau and Suffolk counties, Newsday reported.

Suffolk County Legis. Chad Lennon (C-Rocky Point), who serves as a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps Reserves, said he planned to attend the Calverton ceremony on Tuesday. Since the ceremony was held at a federal cemetery, he said "there's nothing ... we can do" at the county level. He said he, like many others, will turn to other local ceremonies honoring vets across the island.

"It was a way for me being the only veteran on the legislature to be there as the voice of veterans from the county, and just to be there as a fellow veteran and honor those who are no longer with us," Lennon said Thursday of his plans to visit Calverton. "It's very frustrating. There's a lot of emotion ... I can still go there, others can still go there, but now we don't have an official ceremony."

The Calverton cancellation is just one of several impacts the shutdown has wrought on local veterans. Lennon, a military law attorney, said he has fielded calls from local veterans concerned about the federal Department of Veterans Affairs' delays in processing disability, family caregiver and pension cases. He added that the Marine Corps Reserves are not authorized to conduct their monthly drills under the shutdown.

"I'm more active than that, many of us are," Lennon said. "So what we have to do is go on our own time and do the work that we're not getting paid for."