MACHIAS, Maine — If the holiday song “Twelve Days of Christmas” included a reference to Wreaths Across America, the numbers would have to be updated every year to reflect the increasing volume of evergreens handled by the nonprofit organization.
This year, the lyrics would have to include the line “230,000 wreaths.” According to John O’Leary, coordinator for the group’s annual delivery of wreaths to Arlington National Cemetery, that’s the approximate number of veterans’ graves at the famous burial ground outside Washington, D.C.
“We’re trying to cover it,” O’Leary said Saturday of the cemetery, adding that the group delivered 143,000 wreaths to Arlington last December. “When I started, we had 5,000 wreaths on one truck.”
For the past several weeks, volunteers and staff members with Wreaths Across America have been gearing up for its annual effort to deliver Christmas wreaths to Arlington National Cemetery and to ship thousands more to veterans’ groups throughout the country. Among the wreaths created for the group by Worcester Wreath Co. in Harrington is one 12 feet in diameter that will be on display at the Statue of Liberty in New York.
The last wreaths heading to Arlington were expected to come off the production line early Sunday morning and then loaded onto one of about a dozen tractor-trailer trucks that will make their way to Arlington over the next week, arriving the morning of Saturday, Dec. 13.
The convoy was scheduled to assemble Sunday at Narraguagus High School in Harrington and then to depart around 9 a.m. As in prior years, members of American Gold Star Families and the Patriot Guard Riders motorcycle group are expected to be part of the procession. First lady Ann LePage, wife of Gov. Paul LePage, has indicated that she plans to make the trip with convoy for the fourth consecutive year.
Along the way, the convoy will make stops at schools, American Legion halls, churches, veterans’ homes and other locations to help spread the word about the importance of remembering the sacrifices that veterans, military personnel and their families have made, often during Christmas and other holidays when they have been separated from their loved ones.
O’Leary, an Air Force veteran from Norway, Maine, who has been involved with Wreaths Across America since it was founded in 2006, said the annual donation and delivery of wreaths nationwide by the group means a lot to veterans and their families. Morrill Worcester, founder of Worcester Wreath Co. and of the nonprofit group, has been delivering donated wreaths to Arlington National Cemetery since 1992.
O’Leary said he remembers riding in the convoy to Arlington once before when the trucks passed a woman who stood in her front yard with her family holding a tri-folded American flag — a sign they had lost a loved one to military conflict.
“I don’t know how they knew we were coming by at that time,” O’Leary said. “It’s pretty emotional.
“It’s good not to forget people,” he added. “It’s good to give back.”
Late Saturday afternoon, O’Leary and a few other members of Wreaths Across America presented a wreath to residents of the Maine Veterans’ Home in Machias, where about 30 veterans or spouses of veterans live. One of them, 95-year-old former Dennysville resident Edward K. Browne, who served in the Army Air Corps, recounted how he had been held prisoner by the Nazis in Germany in the final months of World War II.
He said he and all nine of his compatriots aboard the B-17 bomber survived having the plane shot down and then being held captive for the next 10 months, during which time they were forced by the Germans to march for 60 days as advancing American and Russian troops squeezed in on the fading Nazi regime from the west and the east. The were freed by the U.S. 9th Army when it crossed the Elbe River in the spring of 1945, he said.
Browne added that, as harrowing as the experience was, he “wouldn’t trade it for anything.” He said he is grateful that, 70 years later, he can tell others about it and that groups such as Wreaths Across America make a point of remembering the sacrifices and experiences of all veterans.
“I’m just thrilled with every part of it,” Browne said of the group’s mission.
