Beneath every one of the 3,730 headstones at the new Sarasota National Cemetery lies a veteran’s life and story. Close to 400,000 veterans live within 75 miles of the cemetery, which will become the final resting place for many of them. Sarasota’s Patterson Foundation has decided to honor those veterans, many members of the Greatest Generation, by donating $5.5 million to create a visitors’ area with sculpture, art and gardens. The foundation wants not only to make the cemetery a place of solace and beauty for veterans’ friends, families and other visitors, but also to create a national model for what our veterans’ cemeteries can be.