Thank You Morrill Worcester

There are many men and women who love America and know the many sacrifices of our military and show their thanks..  Then you have special people like Morrill Worcester owner of Worcester Wreath Company in Harrington, Maine.

Worcester, who has never served in the military, came up with the idea of a wreath-laying ceremony 20 years ago when he found himself with an extra 5,000 wreaths in December, too late to bring to market. He decided upon Arlington National Cemetery, which he had visited as a child.

He continued donating wreaths and holding ceremonies at the cemetery. The event remained relatively small with little fanfare until a photo, showing thousands of green wreaths with red ribbons nestled against headstone on a snow-covered ground, made its way around the Internet about five years ago.

Worcester never expected the wreath-laying effort to grow from a single tractor-trailer carrying a few thousand wreaths to 84 big rigs delivering wreaths to Arlington and hundreds of locations. Besides the Arlington ceremony, his Wreaths Across America organization has organized more than 700 other ceremonies at veterans' cemeteries and monuments across the country and overseas involving 225,000 wreaths.

He got thousands of emails and letters from other loving people wanting to donate, and inquiries from others asking how they could hold wreath-laying ceremonies of their own to pay tribute to those who have served in the military. So he and his wife founded the nonprofit Wreaths Across America to take in donations and organize hundreds of wreath-laying ceremonies at veterans' cemeteries.

Wreaths Across America put 24,000 wreaths on Arlington headstones last year, and initially hoped to put them on virtually all 220,000 headstones this year. That initiative fell short, but Worcester said he's still pleased that they'll be able to put out 100,000 of the laurels.

Figuring out the logistics of resting so many wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery was complex enough when there were only 5,000 to worry about, said Wayne Hanson, who is in charge of coordinating the ceremony at Arlington. If the weather is nice, Hanson expects more than 10,000 people to participate in Saturday's event.

Hanson is optimistic that some year soon all the Arlington headstones will have wreaths placed on them for the ceremony.

"We can work toward doing the whole cemetery for our 25th anniversary," he said.

Thank you to the Worcester family and all the great Americans who have contributed.  It is great that the pay respect to our fallen heroes.

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