The Charleston region’s joint military base has a new name on its gates and in its paperwork.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth renamed Joint Base Charleston as Joint Base Lindsey Graham at a ceremony Aug. 10, honoring the late U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, according to the base. Graham died July 11 at 71 after what his office called a brief and sudden illness, OPB reported.

Graham served 33 years in the Air Force, the base said. He was a lawyer and commissioned officer in the Air Force’s Judge Advocate General Corps, on active duty and then in the South Carolina Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve until 2015, the Pentagon’s news service reported. He retired as a colonel, according to the Navy.

“Senator Lindsey Graham dedicated his life to serving this state and serving the Armed Forces of the United States,” Hegseth said, according to the base.

“Beyond his time in uniform, Senator Graham was vital to Joint Base Charleston’s success,” the base’s commander, Col. K. Michael Shirley II, said in the base’s announcement.

Military leaders credited Graham with helping secure funding for a $26.4 million flight line support facility to replace two aging buildings, WCSC Live 5 reported. The base is also moving ahead with a new $29.5 million fire station, the station reported.

The base’s footprint is large. It hosts more than 60 Defense Department and federal agencies and supports a total force of more than 90,000 service members, civilians, dependents and retirees, its website says. It manages $7.5 billion in property and capital assets on almost 24,000 acres, including three seaports, two airfields and 39 miles of rail.

The Charleston Regional Development Alliance says the base supports nearly 25,000 military and civilian jobs. That is more than the alliance lists for the Medical University of South Carolina, about 17,000, or Boeing, more than 9,000.

The new name is already on federal contracts. The Pentagon’s Aug. 20 announcement of a $264 million Navy construction award to HITT Contracting placed the work at Joint Base Lindsey Graham.

The base said the renaming is a change in name, not in mission.