Wreaths of Remembrance in Hurlock by Debra Messick

Despite a decidedly chilly nip in the early morning air, on Saturday, December 19, hundreds of people from across the Delmarva Peninsula streamed steadily onto the grounds of the Eastern Shore Veterans Cemetery on Route 331, between Hurlock and Preston, marking Wreaths Across America Day.

It has long been traditional for individual families to present greenery at the gravesites of departed military members each Christmas season. But the 2007 founding of nonprofit Wreaths Across America has helped grow the practice into a concerted effort to honor as many veterans as possible, in an ever-expanding number of locations.

Congress unanimously proclaimed the first official Wreaths Across America Day on December 13, 2008. Since then, local community groups have taken up the cause of raising money year-round to sponsor the $15 cost of a balsam wreath harvested in Maine and adorned with a red velvet bow. (The organizations receive $5 from each wreath sponsored towards their own projects.)

On WAA Day 2020 here on the Shore, an honor guard of ladder tower trucks from the Hurlock and Federalsburg Volunteer Fire Departments and a mammoth American flag flanked the Cemetery’s entryway. Local police and sheriff department vehicles and area motorcycle club members had formed a processional convoy to accompany two tractor trailer trucks donated by the Perdue company, carrying more than 5,000 boxed up wreaths.

This was the second year Perdue trucks and the company’s professional drivers (all veterans) had made the journey from Worcester Wreath Company in Harrington, Maine to the Eastern Shore Veterans Cemetery. However, Perdue Farms has worked with WAA since 2007 delivering more than 220,000 wreaths to East Coast veterans cemeteries. This year’s delivery stops included the United States Military Academy at West Point, Annapolis National Cemetery in Annapolis, Md., Delaware Veterans Cemetery (one of two stops in Delaware), four other cemeteries in New York, and Barrancas National Cemetery at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida. (Historically, Perdue also has delivered to Arlington National Cemetery, but pandemic concerns precluded those plans this year).

Though currently coordinating wreath-laying ceremonies at more than 2,100 locations across the United States, at sea and abroad, Wreaths Across America began with a single gesture of remembrance in 1992. Towards the end of that year’s holiday season, Morrill Worcester Maine wreath company had a surplus of inventory. Spurred by his memory of a boyhood visit to Arlington, Worcester reached out to Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, who arranged for the extra wreaths to be transported there and placed in an older section receiving fewer visitors. The tribute continued in low-key fashion each year until 2005, when a stirring picture of wreath-covered Arlington graves against a snowy landscape went viral, attracting “thousands of requests from all over the country from people wanting to help with Arlington, to emulate the Arlington project at their National and State cemeteries, or to simply share their stories and thank Morrill Worcester for honoring our nation’s heroes,” according to the organization’s website.

Inside the grounds, the Perdue trucks traveled the perimeter roadway surrounding each section of the uniquely designed cemetery. The layout of the burial sites is based on a system of radials and concentric circles centered on the American flag in the plaza area of the Chapel. Managed by the Maryland Department of Veterans Affairs, the cemetery opened in December 1976 on the site of a former 51-acre wheat field donated by Dorchester County’s citizens. Approximately 6,300 of the 14,000 available burial sites bear the remains Eastern Shore veterans and family members, according to the MDVA website.

As each truck stopped periodically, random volunteers, many of whom had served in the military but never met until that morning, worked seamlessly as a team inside the truck’s cargo area carefully handing off each box to waiting men and women, accompanied by youngsters of all ages. The recipients then proceeded as if on command to distribute the wreaths throughout the stately rows of headstones. One mother, standing with two young daughters, said that her teenaged son was in the vicinity working alongside members of his baseball team. Several teens wearing Navy hoodies and sweatpants identified themselves of members of the Easton ROTC.

With health concerns in mind, this year’s event did not feature a formal ceremony with speakers which would attract people crowding together. Once the trucks arrived and began making their rounds after 9 a.m., Lynn Riley, who signed on to become local volunteer coordinator in 2018, made announcements over a loudspeaker to attendees moving about the grounds. At 10 a.m., taps sounded from the speaker, and each person busily engaged in laying wreaths immediately stopped and saluted or stood at attention, in silence.

Riley, along with her three sisters, Connie Powell, Jackie Roe, and Lisa Howell, became actively involved three years ago following the death of their mother, Patricia Adler, who was laid to rest in the cemetery where their father, Army veteran Jack Adler is buried. Learning about WAA wreaths on Facebook, the sisters purchased several and visited as a family to lay them at their parents’ gravesites. But they were heartsick seeing the number of headstones without commemorative markers.

“When we found out that there were only 1300 wreaths to spread out over about 5000 graves, we decided that was unacceptable–every grave had to have a wreath! I contacted WAA about being the location coordinator, so that we would know exactly what needed to happen each year going forward,” Riley noted.

While each hold down full-time jobs, they dedicated themselves to doing whatever it took to remedy the situation. At times using precious vacation days, the sisters work year-round personally contacting as many people and businesses in the Hurlock, Federalsburg, and surrounding areas as time and travel miles allow. The persistent outreach efforts generated enough funds well ahead of 2020 to ensure wreaths for every veteran this year, despite the Pandemic’s economic impact, Riley added.

“All of our family is involved at some point, sisters, husbands, children, and grandchildren, and they all, down to the youngest, understand our mission,” Riley stated. The sisters also appreciate being an integral part of a team of individuals and groups across the Shore, most notably, Nola Willis and American Legion Post 296 in Queenstown, and especially District 1 Federated Garden Clubs of Maryland (including 10 community garden clubs across the peninsula). Doris Keys, current director of District 1, was among the Riley’s first contacts.

Keys credits Bozy Markiewicz, a former member of the Worcester County Garden Club, whose husband served and is buried at the cemetery, with being the first locally to knock on doors asking people and businesses to sponsor veterans’ wreaths in 2013, helping the effort “gain steam”. Within a few years District 1 had not only adopted the WAA objective as an official fundraising program, but became the primary group leading the way. “Unfortunately, only a little over 1000 wreaths were sponsored,” Keys noted. By adding a letter writing campaign to businesses to ongoing the garden club donations and Markiewicz personally knocking on doors, the number of wreaths sponsored rose to 3000, but “it was just so hard to place a wreath on only every 3rd or 4th grave,” she lamented.

As a speaker at the WAA Day wreath laying ceremony, people would approach Keys to ask how to help. Riley and her sisters shared their disappointment at not having a wreath for every veteran’s grave, wanting to know what they could do. Nola Willis of American Legion Post 296, Queenstown, also wanted to help. Buoyed by the energetic additions to the fundraising team, District 1’s goal became placing a wreath on every grave at the Eastern Shore Veterans Cemetery, Keys noted. And in 2018, for the first time, that goal was met: each headstone had a sponsored wreath, with extra money put towards 2019.

For more information about Wreaths Across America at the Eastern Shore Veterans Cemetery, visit https://www.facebook.com/easternshoreMDVeteranscemetery.

Debra Messick is a retired Dorchester County Public Library associate and lifelong freelance writer. A transplanted native Philadelphian, she has enjoyed residing in Cambridge MD since 1995.