What began 15 years ago as a fairly simple concept — a wreathmaker in Maine hauling extras to Arlington National Cemetery to lay them on headstones — swelled to its largest placement over the weekend as more than 2,000 volunteers honored the graves of 10,000 veterans.
They placed most of the wreaths in Section 33, the final resting place for many older veterans. But it was a section of fresher graves nearby, where troops from Iraq and Afghanistan are buried, that was on the minds of many.
“When you walk to Section 60,” said volunteer John Wil liams, whose son Jack, an infantryman, arrived in Baghdad a week ago, “you can’t help but think of him.”
Williams, 66, a Vietnam veteran, helps lead a nonprofit group that works with the Arlington Wreath Project. He traveled with a caravan that carried the wreaths from Maine, where the retired Coast Guard captain has also worked as a lobsterman and plumbing inspector.
As the Arlington Wreath Project’s reputation has grown, so has the number of people eager to place wreaths on the graves of the men and women who lost their lives serving their country.
At Arlington in Virginia on Saturday, Williams met people with remarkable stories, including Mary Lou Wade. She had flown from Florida and picked up a wreath for her brother’s headstone.
Inside his coffin, there wasn’t much more than a uniform and a tooth. For more than 30 years, the remains of her brother, who died in Vietnam, had not been found. Last year, after sifting through remains turned over to the United States years earlier, officials identified her brother’s tooth, in part by linking it to a DNA sample she provided.
“He’s home,” she told Wil liams, hugging him and pointing to her brother’s grave. “He’s home.”
