Remembering Our Heroes: Each Year Volunteers Place Christmas Wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery

I received an email from my mother a few days ago about this event. I am surprised that I had never heard of it! I have never read about it or seen it featured on TV. This story really touched my heart, and I would like to share it with you. Everyone should know that every single one of our fallen American heroes are remembered each year.

It is now a yearly Christmas tradition for Maine volunteers to place a beautiful green wreath upon each headstone of Arlington National Cemetery. All of this began because of the wreath donator’s own paper route as a boy.

Morrill Worcester was 14 years old and a paper delivery boy for the Bangor Daily News. There was a contest held one year. For the paperboy who signed-up the most new subscribers, he would receive a five-day trip to Washington, DC. Worcester was determined to win and he did.

During his trip, Worcester visited the military cemetery at Arlington. He saw the massive number of graves belonging to soldiers as far back as the Civil War as well as the 24-hour color guard and tomb of the unknown soldier. "It just stuck with me," he said. "This is a national shrine."

Thirty years later, Worcester started his own company. He became owner of the Worcester Wreath Company in Harrington. He now has 17,000 acres of evergreens and has sales reaching 500,000. One year, one of his warehouses called to tell him they had too many wreaths and no where to put them. It was December, too late in the season for any more sales. Worcester found himself with more than 4,500 extra Christmas wreaths. So, he decided to donate them to the cemetery.

Since that first winter wreath event of 1992, it has become an annual tradition. To begin with there were 10 people volunteering to place the wreath, but now, that number has reached 200.

"It's just a thing that we do and we always will, as long as we can," Worcester has said.

The Holiday event is organized by the Maine State Society in Washington, DC, but friends of society members, local veterans, and Maine congressional delegation staffers also help lay the wreaths.