Arlington Cemetery struggles with old reservations

‘De facto reserved’

Although the cemetery stopped formally taking reservations in 1962, the practice of reserving choice grave sites continued, if unofficially, under Raymond J. Costanzo, who was superintendent from 1972 to 1990. Metzler, his successor, who ran the cemetery until he was forced to retire last year, also apparently allowed people to pick areas of the cemetery where they wanted to be buried, Army officials said.

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The Army, which investigated the matter two decades ago and is looking into it again, has a list from 1990 with “senior officials” who have plots that “were de facto reserved in violation of Army policy,” according to a memo obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Act. Some of those officials were driven around the cemetery by Costanzo, who told investigators that he had allowed them to pick their spots.

“I take the position that if there is anything I can do positively for a person, I will try to do that as long as it is not a serious violation of any rule, regulation or law,” he told investigators at the time.

Five months after receiving a request from The Post, the Army has declined to release the 1990 list of people with reservations. It has not released documents, found by Condon, that appeared to show that Metzler also pre-assigned grave sites or promised availability in certain sections. She has since turned the documents over to the Army inspector general. (The revelation that graves were reserved unofficially was first reported by Salon.com last year.)

Superintendents of national cemeteries, especially those with limited space, are often under pressure to find choice spots for important people, none more so than Arlington’s, said Roger Rapp, a former deputy undersecretary for operations with the Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Cemetery Administration.

“I’ve been with Jack, and he’s told me the amount of calls he got from senators and high-ranking officials — people concerned about would they have a spot or a particular spot in the cemetery,” said Rapp, who has been friends with Metzler for 30 years. “I know he was under tremendous pressure.”

To accommodate that pressure, cemetery directors have to keep graves in sought-after sections “in your hip pocket,” he said. “If a Supreme Court justice dies and if the cemetery director does not put them in an area where the other Supreme Court justices are, it makes him look like he’s not doing his job. Most cemetery directors know where they can find burial space. That’s just the way it is.”

Metzler, who has repeatedly declined to give interviews, did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Condon said the cemetery would not honor any reservations made after 1962.

“We do not do reservations, and anyone who claims to have a reservation post-1962, we do not accommodate them,” she said. “When the loved one or veteran passes, that’s when we determine where we’ll bury them.”

In the eight months that she has been running the cemetery, Condon has turned down several people who said they had been promised a burial plot.

“I’m off a lot of people’s Christmas card lists,” she said.

Condon said the cemetery does “accommodate families in their time of need” by allowing survivors to choose an area of the cemetery for their loved one as they plan the funeral. If there is an available grave site in that area, she said, the family would be granted the spot.

Section 7A, near the Tomb of the Unknowns, is full of generals and Medal of Honor recipients. Lee Marvin, the actor and a World War II veteran, and Joe Louis, the boxing champion, are buried there. So are Costanzo and Metzler’s father, who was Arlington’s superintendent from 1951 to 1972.

Cemetery officials said that if the younger Metzler is buried at Arlington, he would be treated like everyone else: unable to reserve a site but allowed to request a general area of the cemetery, as long as there are grave sites available.

There aren’t many left in Section 7A. But the plot in front of his father’s grave is vacant.

Staff researcher Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report.