FORT SMITH — Army veteran George Goins has driven from his home in El Paso, Texas, to Fort Smith each year since 2010 to lay a wreath at the grave of his wife, Maria, who is buried at the national cemetery there.
Goins, along with family from Texas and Oklahoma, was among the thousands of people who gathered at cemeteries across the United States on Saturday in what has become a Christmas tradition: to remember veterans and loved ones who served and died in the service of their country by laying a wreath at their graves.
“It’s a credit to all these people, not just in Fort Smith but all around,” Goins said Saturday, looking around at the hundreds of people at the cemetery. “You don’t see nothing like this. I haven’t.”
Goins was one of the military representatives who presented wreaths during the ceremony in the name of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Merchant Marines and the prisoners of war/missing in action.
Ceremonies were held at national cemeteries across the country for the annual Wreaths Across America event. The wreaths are laid at the same time as the noon ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
Fayetteville held its sixth wreath-laying ceremony. For Fort Smith, it was the fifth. Congress voted Dec. 13, 2008, as Wreaths Across America Day, and the event is held each year on the second or third Saturday in December, according to the organization’s website.
“It’s important to remember and honor them during the holiday season,” Fayetteville Wreaths Across America coordinator David Myers said. “Sometimes we forget those we shouldn’t forget.”
Hundreds of veterans, families and interested residents showed up in Fort Smith to listen to speeches honoring the veterans who have died and to help lay the wreaths on the 13,100 graves at the cemetery.
Preparing and transporting 15,000 wreaths just out of storage filled a Fort Smith Convention Center exhibition hall Friday morning. An army of volunteers, aided by school children bused in from as far away as Poteau, Okla., made quick work of the task preparing wreaths and ribbons stacked high on tables.
“I believe they are here because they love their country,” Fort Smith Christmas Honors co-chairman Philip Merry said of the volunteers Friday. “It’s fun to celebrate country and Christmas at the same time.”
Speakers during the ceremony at the Fort Smith National Cemetery, among them Jeffrey Teas, national cemetery acting executive director of Memorial Service Network II in Atlanta, said those who served and died for America should not be forgotten.
Once the speeches and music concluded, the crowd, including families with children, fanned out throughout the Fort Smith National Cemetery and placed wreaths on every grave in a matter of minutes. They will remain on the graves until after the holidays, Merry said.
In Fayetteville, wreaths obtained from Worcester Wreath Co. in Columbia Falls, Maine, arrived before dawn Saturday in three Wal-Mart tractor-trailers that were escorted to the Fayetteville National Cemetery by the Arkansas State Police, Fayetteville Police Department and about 100 motorcyclists from veterans organizations, Myers said.
After the ceremony in Fayetteville, which was attended by an estimated 3,000 people, it took just minutes, as in Fort Smith, to lay the wreaths at each of the cemetery’s 7,400 graves.
The tradition had its roots in 1992 with Morrill Worcester, owner of Worcester Wreath Co., who first sent surplus wreaths to Arlington National Cemetery to decorate graves in one of the older sections of the cemetery that he noticed received fewer and fewer visitors each year.
As his plans became known, other individuals and groups decided they would like to participate. Some provided transportation for the wreaths; others distributed them at the cemetery.
In 2005, after a photo of a snow-covered gravestone with a wreath circulated on the Internet, the project gained national attention. By 2010, more than 200,000 wreaths were laid at 545 cemeteries.