Wreaths Across America Scheduled for Dec. 15th at Beverly
Individual Sponsorships Available for $15
Burlington County residents and businesses are being encouraged to participate in the 20th Annual Wreaths Across America ceremony at Beverly National Cemetery on Saturday, Dec. 15th at noon. The event again will be sponsored by the N.J. Wing of the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary Civil Air Patrol and the U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corps, and supported by the Burlington County Freeholders.
One wreath for each branch of service will be donated by the Worcester Wreath Company of Maine to remember all soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who served their nation in the Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, Merchant Marines, and POW/MIA will be placed during a remembrance ceremony that will be coordinated simultaneously at more than 500 participating locations in all 50 states and beyond.
Wreath-laying ceremonies will be held concurrently at those locations at noon EST Dec. 15 to honor the nation’s veterans who no longer have loved ones or whose families are too far away to decorate their graves during the holidays.
For the seventh consecutive year, a remembrance ceremony will be held at the flagpole at the entrance to Beverly National Cemetery. Beverly in Edgewater Park and Brigadier General William C. Doyle Cemetery in North Hanover are two of 19 locations in New Jersey to participate this year.
Sponsorships – individual, family or business – are available for $15 each through http://www.wreathsacrossamerica.org. The public can purchase wreaths and designate a site for it to be placed.
The Wreaths Across America remembrance ceremonies began in 1992 when Worcester Wreath Company in Maine donated 5,000 wreaths to be placed at headstones in Arlington National Cemetery. Now, Worcester donates the seven wreaths for each participating location. Individual and business donations provide the remainder of the wreaths and will be placed at gravesites by volunteers on Dec. 15.
Volunteer trucking companies will begin the trip of more than 800 miles on Sunday, Dec. 9 from Quoddy Head State Park in Lubec, ME to the National Cemetery at Arlington, VA. Escorted by the Patriot Guard Riders, the caravan of more than 50 long-haul tractor trailers will wind through nine states and make various stops for remembrance and teaching opportunities.
The caravan is scheduled to arrive at the NJ Vietnam War Memorial in Holmdel on Wednesday, Dec. 12 and arrive at the USS Battleship New Jersey in Camden on Thursday, Dec. 13 at 8:30 a.m.. Also, there will be State House ceremonies in all 50 states at noon on Monday, Dec. 10.
Major Patrick Rutherford of the N.J. Wing of the Civil Air Patrol said more than 400 wreaths are expected to be placed at headstones this year at Beverly.
The public is invited to attend and participate in the wreath laying after the program, which will begin at noon with a moment of silence. There will be a brief ceremony before Civil Air Patrol Cadets, Naval Sea Cadets, guests and interested attendees will place more wreaths at headstones in designated areas of the 64-acre cemetery.
Since Wreaths Across America began 19 years ago when Worcester Wreath Company initiated a tradition of placing wreaths on the headstones of our nation's fallen heroes at Arlington National Cemetery during the holidays, Worcester Wreath has donated approximately 100,000 wreaths which have been placed by volunteers in a wreath-laying ceremony each December.
Beverly National Cemetery opened in 1863 and is currently closed to interments. There are 48,907 veterans buried there. The cemetery was placed on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1997.
