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.