Seventy-nine-year-old retired Navy Rear Adm. Harold Robinson has a dream for 2026: walking up to the Chaplains Hill monuments at Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) and seeing 85 freshly-cast names on its plaques, new granite gleaming.
“Several of those names are chaplains I served with during my career,” said Robinson, a 36-year Jewish chaplain. “They each have significant meaning for me.”
The National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces (NCMAF), a nonprofit Robinson volunteers with, inched one step closer to the fulfilment of that dream on Dec. 18, 2025. That’s when President Donald Trump signed the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law — a portion of which approves updates to the group of stone memorials in Section 2 at the nation’s most famous cemetery. Those updates — at NCMAF’s urging — include adding the names of 85 deceased chaplains of various faiths who served in the Korean, Vietnam and Global War on Terror conflicts, as well as replacing concrete with superior granite.
The project started in 2011, when Robinson and other NCMAF members discovered the current memorial’s missing names, some dating back decades. They put in the proper legal legwork, attending multiple committee meetings, petitioning legislators and even promising funding to cover the entire project cost. According to a previous interview with NCMAF officials, cemetery officials cited “an obscure Arlington requirement that veterans must be deceased for at least a quarter-century before having their names added to any monument.”
Twice, in 2021 and 2022, the NDAAs included positive language toward the monument update, but Arlington officials wouldn’t budge, Robinson said. This time around, lawmakers changed the wording to “The Secretary of the Army shall permit NCMAF … to make such other updates and corrections to the memorial that the Secretary determines necessary.” Previously, the act used the word “may” instead of “shall.”
“It’s the difference between going to your school principal and saying, ‘I’d wish you’d let us have a PTA’ and going and saying, ‘State law requires you to have a PTA here,’” Robinson said. “The fact that it is now law and it is not discretionary is a huge celebration.”
Military Families Magazine reached out to ANC for comment about the approved updates in the FY26 NDAA:
“The Department of the Army looks forward to working with the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces (NCMAF) on changes to the current monuments on Chaplains Hill. We do not have an estimated timeline at this stage; however, any updates will be funded by NCMAF, and the Army will ensure that any changes are in accordance with the current statute,” according to an Arlington National Cemetery spokesperson.
The fight isn’t over yet though. Thus far, most likely due to the holiday break, there has been no communication between Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll and NCMAF, at the time of reporting.
“We’re waiting for our legislative knights in shining armor to be in touch with him and encourage the facilitation of the project,” Robinson said. Until then, they wait.
Some of those knights include Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Rep. Bill Keating of Massachusetts, Sen. Tommy Tuberville from Alabama, Rep. Jack Bergman of Michigan and Sen. Jim Banks from Indiana. NCMAF hopes their bipartisan efforts result in a special rededication ceremony before Memorial Day.
“We will be trying to contact all the families of these 85 chaplains and invite them, as well as the chaplain corps and the Congressional staff who worked on this,” said Robinson. “Because we want to honor the people who died while serving our country and their God.”
Catch up on previous coverage of this issue.
