By: Zoe Lazanowski, Sofia Refo, and Carlie Glowacki
Wreaths Across America is putting wreaths on veterans’ graves to honor their service in battle.
(Ozona Elementary, FL) Wreaths Across America is giving a salute to honor the ones who lost their lives in the fight to protect America.
Wreaths Across America is accepting donations all through the year to honor people who died in the war.
You can donate money to the service if you have a loved one who was a veteran and died in the war. By Christmas, they will put a wreath on their grave to remember and honor them.
According to wreathsacrossamerica.org, the story of this organization starts off in Maine, where a 12-year-old paperboy named Morril Worchester took a trip to D.C. and saw Arlington national cemetery. That trip gave him the idea to place wreaths on all of the graves of veterans that lost their lives in war.
Now, a little more than 26 years later, there are more than 1.8 million wreaths on veterans’ graves.
The motto for Wreaths Across America is ‘Remember, Honor, Teach’. The organizer who wrote the motto put ‘remember’ as the first line in the motto because we want to remember the loved one who died and be thankful for their services.
Second, they put ‘honor,’ because we want to honor them by ordering a wreath in their memory. Lastly, we have ‘teach,’ because we want to teach the next generation of kids their story and about their service.
The organization has even come so far as to have their own national day. On Dec 14 of every year, Wreaths Across America sends volunteers out to help put wreaths on veterans’ graves and have ceremonies to remember those fallen heroes.
If you want to honor a loved and missed veteran or if you’d like to learn more, you can go to wreathsacrosssamerica.org. It is $15 to sponsor and buy a wreath.
To volunteer for Wreaths Across America Day, you can go to the same website and sign up to volunteer for the day. Every moment you give helps; if only one person volunteered, the process would go way slower and fewer wreaths would be put up.
If you need more information, you can email Wreaths Across America from the contact tab on their website, or reach them by phone at (877)-385-9504.
