Maine Man, CAP, Other Groups, Honor Our Fallen

If you've ever been to Arlington National Cemetery, it probably made a deep impression on you. It sure did on Morrill Worcester when he visited Arlington as a boy of 12, on his first trip to the capital.

He remembered the cemetery in 1992, when he found himself stuck with a surplus of product. You see, Worcester, of the hardscrabble farming community of Harrington, Maine, has built the world's largest mail order company that specializes in... Christmas wreaths. In rural Maine, apart from rocks, the two most plentiful things are pine boughs and willing hands to assemble them. And in 1992, he had planned a little wrong, and had thousands of extra wreaths.

He immediately thought of the cemetery. "We're the largest mail-order wreath business in the world, and you could only do that in the United States," he said, to the American Farm Bureau Federation. "The opportunity that we have has a lot to do with those who gave their lives."

His Senator, Olympia Snowe, helped open some doors and he and a handful of volunteers spent a day putting up the 4,500 wreaths. Some places were obvious -- the mast of the battleship Maine, of course. The graves of Maine politicians who were veterans. The fresh graves of those fallen, or recovered, most recently. But Worcester also insisted that some of the wreaths go into the far corners of the cemetery, away from the tourist track to the graves of the decorated and famous. This was a hit with cemetery officials, even as they realized they were on the hook for removing the wreaths at season's end.

In 1993, he planned for extra wreaths.

This year, the operation kicked off with D-Day like planning. One army of volunteers assembles in Maine, and assembles the wreaths. I was pleased to see that the Civil Air Patrol is one of the organizations contributing, along with the Legion, VFW, and students -- and Worcester Wreath Co. employees.

The wreaths are hauled by the Blue Bird ranch Trucking Company of nearby Jonesboro, Maine, to Washington, where yet another army of volunteers assembles. This army is cadred by the Maine State Society, an organization of native Mainiacs who find themselves transplanted to Washington but want to maintain ties to their home state.  The DC volunteers include students, veterans, and staffers from Maine's small Congressional delegation, along with busloads of school kids -- both local, and from Maine.

"We've got so many volunteers, we're turning people away," Worcester says.

They lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknowns in a solemn ceremony under the watchful eyes of the Old Guard of the Army. Then they place the other wreaths -- some go to areas of current interest, but most will be placed in the rarely-visited oldest areas of the cemetery.

The dead from the Civil War, Spanish-American War and World War I are among those seldom visited today; there are so many generations between them and us that many of their living descendants don't even know they're there. With an egalitarianism reminiscent of a Maine town meeting, Worcester, his volunteers, and the cemetery staff rotate sections every year so that a fresh four thousand of the 300,000 dead in Arlington can be honored.

What about the soldiers who are not Christians? There's an easy answer to that. The wreath predates Christianity, although America's dominant Christian culture has made it into a Christian symbol. The evergreen boughs, and the circular shape, both symbolize eternal life, which is the promise and hope of most major religions, not just Christianity. And for atheists, it's a spiffy holiday decoration.

Now, you might ask, what has this got to do with aviation? And, since these wreaths were placed two weeks ago, how is it news? We admit the aviation connection is most tenuous. Some of the dead in Arlington are aviators, like Charles Lindbergh's flight instructor, Ira Biffle. (Lindbergh himself, the most private of celebrities, is buried in Hawaii).

And there's the CAP angle... we tend to think CAP = Search and Rescue without thinking of the other stuff they do, of which this is an interesting example. But most of all, it was just too good a story not to share with you.

These pictures were sent to Nose by a vet buddy Friday night, along with a link to Worcester's story. A web search determined they were US Air Force photos by Master Sergeant Jim Varhegyi, a couple more are here at Air Force Link. Next Christmas, we'll go to DC and take some pictures ourselves, maybe. If Abe Lincoln's successors remember whose country it is, and let us fly there. But whether or not we get there, we know that Worcester and his wreaths will.

FMI: www.arlingtoncemetery.net