‘Hiccup’ creates mountain of wreaths at Beaufort National Cemetery and a plea for help
As usual, thousands of wreaths were placed on graves at Beaufort National Cemetery in December as part of the Wreaths Across America program.
But the tributes turned into a mountain of a problem after arrangements to dispose of the wreaths — all 26,000 — fell through at the 11th hour.
“There is a mountain (literally) of wreaths still sitting at the back of the cemetery,” Wreaths Across America Beaufort said on its Facebook Page Monday. “We need to keep on good terms with Beaufort National Cemetery and take care of this asap.”
On Tuesday morning, two days after the Saturday “retirement” ceremony for the wreaths, when more than 100 volunteers showed up to remove them from the grave markers, there was still a huge pile of green wreaths stacked in the back of the cemetery. A backhoe was being used to load the wreaths into a garbage truck.
The mix-up is expected to be resolved later this week, but it initially had volunteers scrambling and seeking assistance from the public.
“We ran into a little obstacle,” David Edwards, location coordinator for Wreaths Across America Beaufort, told the Beaufort Gazette and Island Packet Tuesday morning.
Edwards struggled to make arrangements, he said, for a waste removal company to bring dumpsters on Saturday. The company that had previously provided dumpsters and hauled the wreaths to the landfill — Edwards would not say who that was — was unable to do it this year, leaving no place to dump 26,000 wreaths.
“I’ve always had people to dispose of them,” Edwards said. “This year I got slapped in the face.”
Wreaths Across America Beaufort put out an urgent plea for help on Facebook, saying “our work is a long way from done!! If anyone is around and can spare an hour we need help!!! If you have a pick up truck and trailer we can load wreaths into that would help too.”
Residents with trucks and trailers began showing up and started loading. “Holy guacamole!” the group said on Facebook. “Our family and friends never stop surprising us!”
The robust response forestalled a launch of a GoFundMe campaign to cover the estimated $3,000 cost of disposal, which had been considered.
“We’ve had a lot of people,” Edwards said, “jumping on board since we put the plea out.”
Edwards said Tuesday he was in discussions with waste hauling companies about removing the remaining wreaths, but the cost remained up on the air.
Edwards was hoping that the wreaths will be removed without a significant cost to the all-volunteer organization. Details still were being worked out.
In 1992, Morrill Worcester, owner of Worcester Wreath Company of Harrington, Maine, made arrangements for a surplus of wreaths to be placed at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C., in one of the older sections of the cemetery that had been receiving fewer visitors.
Wreaths Across America, a non-profit, started in 2007 to expand the effort around the country.
Today, each December on National Wreaths Across America Day, wreath-laying ceremonies are conducted at more than 3,700 additional locations including Beaufort National Cemetery. Groups organize wreath sponsorships, with each wreath costing $15.
Wreaths Across America Beaufort coordinates the wreath-laying and retirement ceremonies with 44-acre Beaufort National Cemetery, which is operated by the Veterans Administration’s National Cemetery Administration.
For the past two years, Edwards said, enough wreaths have been sponsored to place one on each of the 26,000 interments at the cemetery. In some instances, wreaths are placed on both sides of the markers. That’s up from 8,640 in 2017, which at the time was a record.
“With the help of Beaufort, Beaufort County and families throughout the United States,” Edwards said, “we’ve been able to accomplish it.”
Edwards has been the coordinator for the Beaufort National Cemetery wreath laying for the past 14 years. He loves the job, describing it as a bit like organizing a music concert, with a lot of logistics to handle, including the disposal of the wreaths.
In a perfect world, said Michael Brophy, the Cemetery Administration’s assistant director-in-charge at Beaufort National Cemetery, all of the dumpsters needed to dispose of the wreaths would have been on hand Saturday. Brophy described the oversight as a “minor inconvenience.” “Just a little hiccup,” he said.
Additional dumpsters, Brophy said, are expected to arrived Thursday to deal with the overflow.
This story was originally published January 17, 2023 at 12:46 PM.
