Wreaths Across America: Project marches on, with changes

ELWOOD, Ill. — Despite the lack of an official ceremony, the Wreaths Across America program at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery marched on this year.

“We had a few more challenges this year than normal because of COVID, it’s just a little longer process, but nobody is complaining about that process because we are just all so glad it was not canceled,” said Mark Schneidewind, manager of Will County Farm Bureau.

The annual program, which usually takes place in a single Saturday in December, this year was stretched out due to COVID-19 precautions. The memorial ceremony that happens at 11 a.m. at the cemetery was canceled. Instead, a shorter, private version of the ceremony was performed and posted online.

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Volunteers are integral to the success of the Wreaths Across America mission. For the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery Wreaths Across America event, volunteers from Will County Farm Bureau unload the wreaths out of semis and then take them to drop-off points in the cemetery, where volunteers then place them on graves. This year, the wreaths were distributed at the Village of Elwood Municipal Building parking lot, and volunteers had to sign up online to place them on the graves.

In non-COVID years, thousands of volunteers and family members attend that ceremony and then stream out across the cemetery to place the wreaths on graves.

“Normally we do this all on one day. This year, we had to spread it out over four days and we had to have the wreaths at a separate location to hand out, since we weren’t gathering at the cemetery,” said Debbie Bennett.

Bennett is the Wreaths Across America location coordinator for the event at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery. Bennett has been the location coordinator for the project for 12 years.

Bennett said she was grateful for cooperation from the Village of Elwood.

“We needed a place to meet that was close to the cemetery and big enough to hand out the wreaths. We called them and they were really great about letting us use the parking lot and that has worked out really good,” Bennett said.

Schneidewind agreed that the parking lot at the village’s municipal center worked well for the offsite distribution of wreaths. Volunteers from Will County Farm Bureau offloaded wreaths from semis into livestock trailers as they always have.

Usually, the farmers then process to the cemetery early on the morning of the Saturday that is designated as Wreaths Across America Day, always on a Saturday in December. They leave boxes of the wreaths at each of the sections and volunteers then collect the wreaths and place them on the graves.

This year, volunteers signed up online for a timeslot at the cemetery. They collected their wreaths from the pickup location at the municipal center.

“It worked out really, really nice because there is a dead-end part of the parking lot where we could set up, so we were there with the wreaths. There was room for eight to 10 cars. We talked to each one separately, we loaded up what they needed and they went out to the cemetery,” Schneidewind said.

The role that Will County Farm Bureau plays in the annual memorial event also saw some changes.

“The big thing was that we did not do the police escort out to the cemetery because they weren’t allowing any of the trailers out there because of COVID,” Schneidewind said.

One of the farmers, Dave Kestel of Manhattan, placed a wreath on the grave of his father, Anthony Kestel, a U.S. Army veteran who died in December 2016.

Kestel is one of the volunteers who helps unload the wreaths and, in past years, delivered the boxes of wreaths to the cemetery. This year, Kestel and other farmers took wreaths to the Village of Elwood Municipal Building parking lot.

From there, volunteers who signed up online for a designated time to place wreaths on the graves, picked up their allotted number of wreaths, then drove to the cemetery to bedeck the graves.

Kestel said he missed the memorial ceremony, but he was able to place more wreaths on graves than he had in past years.

“I was able to do a little bit for four days in a row, so the whole thing, for me, has been stretched out longer and that part of it has been nice. But it’s definitely missing something without the ceremony,” Kestel said.

Not every grave gets a wreath, Bennett said. But she was pleased with the numbers of sponsored wreaths compared to last year.

“This year we received 21,000 wreaths and last year it was around 25,000, but I am really happy with that number because of COVID and everything going on. It’s more than I anticipated we would have,” she said.

But decking the all the graves at the national cemetery remains her goal.

“One day every grave will get a wreath. There are over 60,000 veterans buried there, and one day, each grave will have a wreath,” Bennett said.