Flower donations falling short – give!
Dunno if I am allowed to do this, but here goes:
The Memorial Days Flowers Foundation has been placing flowers at the graves at Arlington for over a decade. This year, donations are far short of what is needed – at the current pace they will have enough to place flowers at only 80,000 of the 310,000 graves.
The Memorial Day tradition of placing flowers at the graves of fallen troops — one that started as “Decoration Day” — began on May 30, 1868, on the heels of the nation’s bloodiest war in history. The Memorial Day Flowers Foundation joined the effort in 2011 and has been placing flowers at the gravesites of fallen service members ever since.
The organization started by placing 10,000 roses at graves in the cemetery, and eventually expanded to cemeteries around the country through the help of donors, businesses and volunteers.
Not going to speculate why the donations are off, comment about the worth of those who should donate and don’t – I know they aren’t going to get it all here – but if all of us chipped in a few bucks and told our friends (those of us that have any) maybe we could help get the ball rolling. How many of us have friends or family members in a military cemetery? Oughta be at least that many donations!
Here is a link to their site:
H/t to Jeff LPH
Category: Arlington National Cemetary
Maybe if they quit placing flowers on dependents/children’s gravesite, i.e. those who never directly served and place the flowers only on the Veteran gravesites?
When doing Wreaths Across America, we became frustrated that alot of wreaths were placed on Dependents graves. Every year, we run out of wreaths to place at Veterans gravesites.
Yes, we said something and got dirty looks. We quit doing Wreaths Across America for our AOR.
Yes, we know Dependents are the “backbone”. We had no problems donating and laying wreaths for dependents graves as long as the wreath was laid at a Veteran’s gravesite first and not first at a dependent/dependents site.
To bad our current Commander In Chief can’t purchase all the flowers and wreaths for Veteran gravesites. One would think he would do that since all we hear is Beau, Beau, Beau…
🫣
It will be less when the SJ clowns try to remove Confederate Soldiers from ANC.
Look what happened at Pennsylvania:
Pennsylvania Revises Confederate Markers, Recasts Forces As “Enemy” Soldiers”
https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2021/12/pennsylvania-confederate-monuments-gettysburg/
Fucking clowns.
The debate continues, even in southern AZ.
https://www.myheraldreview.com/news/confederate-memorial-took-a-community-effort/article_e262fe88-8d2b-11e7-899f-6bbee640955b.html
Well, good to know that the Daughters of the Confederacy is a “neo-Confederate” group focused on “whitewashing” history. There’s a man that shares my first and last name in the Confederate Section of ANC who served in Company B, 19th Battalion of the Virginia Heavy Artillery. Despite my years of rendering honors in the Cemetery, the friends I have who rest there, and the overall significance of the place, if the Confederate Section is ever desecrated, I’ll know that its days as hallowed ground are truly numbered.
Bunch of clowns in charge, pandering to woke modernists who aren’t necessarily ignorant of history but who want to change that history to fit their narrative and make them feel like they’re someone special. Look at Monument(less) Avenue in Richmond for an example of how far they’ll go to erase things, just because they’re deemed to be the “wrong side of history”.
Comrade, no one died at Elmira and if they did it was an unfortunate chain of events out of the control the Benevolent Union Forces for Racial Peace and Harmony Commission due to an unforeseen lack of rainbow glitter.
Please adjust your history to correspond to the new themstory.
Aren’t there nearly 400,000 graves at Arlington? If they’re only looking at ~310,000 then maybe they are already taking that into account and focusing on fallen vets, first.
As for the current commander in queef, I see him stepping foot in Arlington as similar to the devil crossing the threshold of the church – it burns, and he only stays as long as he must to keep up appearances.
Maybe the public is getting burned out on our “Woke” Military such as renaming Army Military Installations?
We rather spend money to organizations that help living Veterans and their families or to those families of our fallen comades (Tunnels To Towers is one example).
Arlington grave sites receives wreaths every year (Wreaths Across America).
Perhaps asking the public to donate $$ for flowers for Memorial Day for Arlington may be overdoing it?
🤔
The story focused only on Arlington.
Why?
How are the other cemeteries across the USA and other Countries that have buried Veterans doing reference flowers for Memorial Day for their gravesite?
Asking For A Friend.
https://gravelocator.cem.va.gov/ngl/
Speaking of the Memorial Days Flowers Foundation falling short for donations to place flowers at Arlington:
Perhaps one should receive a ribbon (participation trophy sarc) just as the Army is doing for recruiting?
*sarc*
“100 Soldiers Awarded Recruiting Ribbon as Army Struggles to Find New Recruits”
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/05/17/army-has-given-100-recruiting-ribbons-soldiers-who-helped-gin-enlistment.html
“More than 100 soldiers have earned the Army’s new recruiting award as the service leans on existing troops to bring enlistees into the ranks and help fill gaps amid a historic recruiting slump.”
“The Army recruiting ribbon has been given out to 104 soldiers. In addition to the awards, at least 58 soldiers have been promoted as part of a new policy aimed at motivating troops to pitch military service to their community.”
“In addition to the new chest candy, junior enlisted troops also earn a promotion for bringing in a new recruit.”
“Last year, the service was short 15,000 soldiers of its goal of bringing in 60,000 new troops. This year, senior leaders had an even more ambitious goal of 65,000 recruits.”
That’s some weak ass shit. And I mean weak ass shit.
I remember in the day when you hung an AAM on a guy doing the right thing. Maybe there was no particular event / action to get it, but you came up with one to give him a little salad and respect because he was doing good shit (unlike many other problem turds).
But at least they earned it (AAM – step one in collecting awards) in doing unit-level stuff.
Question: I assume you get a little “dude” or “silhouette” for each person brought in on your ribbon – kinda like oak leaf cluster. So, what happens when your “dude” gets the boot for drugs, DUI, etc.? Does Big Army contact you and tell you to remove a cluster? Additionally, do you get a “C” if you brought your dude in on the phone when deployed? Get my point. The regs are going to be hilarious on this one.
Fucking clusterfuck weak ass fucking shit.
👏👏👏👏👌👌👌👌👍👍👍👍👍!!!!!!
I’m shocked, also shocked once more ‘gain that big A army made it blue!
Either overlooked, which is sad, or intentional and the NCO “should be promoted ahead of peers”!!!
Army Recruiting Ribbon, Given
The ARR,G has been given out to 104 soldiers.
At different points during my enlistment, they’d give rank, an AAM, or both for convincing friends to sign.
I prefer there be a separate “teacher’s pet” award. The promotion to E-2 isn’t that big a deal – though paying all EM a bit better might go a long way for recruiting.
*Edited for typo.
David wrote…”Dunno if I am allowed to do this, but here goes:” Easier to for ask forgiveness, than it is to ask for permission. What they gonna do, draft you and make you an Editor for a Mil-blog? Force you to CCW a (shudder…gasp…clutches pearls…THE HORROR) a Glock (faints away)?
I buy some WAA wreaths every year from an organization that makes a little % from the sale of them. That Group is an Historical Honor Society for Vets that uses all funds generated to maintain and upkeep Veteran’s Resting Places and Monuments. No salaries or admin $s are paid to anyone in the group. My wreaths are placed on those Resting Places marked as “Unknown”.
I do not attend public services held on the closest Monday to 30 May. What I do is gather, on 30 May, with some Vet Buds and we go to private, out of the way burial grounds, many of which have KIA from nearly every conflict, placing hand picked flowers and a small flag on each. A toast is raised “to absent companions” and a volley salute is fired. Since I will be in Tampa for my Grand Son’s graduation this year on 30 May, I plan to get my daughter is take me to a small Church yard burial ground near her home where I can pay respects to some Fallen Service Members there.
For any interested I can provide some links to the story behind the ANC “Reconciliation Monument”, telling “…the rest of the story.” and the fight to save it.
The destruction of “All Things Confederate” will not stop the destruction of our shared history. Watch…Prepare.
Free country David. It used to be anyway. You’re welcome to rattle the cup for whatever charity you like as long as it’s clear there is no official endorsement from TAH/VG.
I may have done much the same thing on an occasion.
Or three.