Veterans Day may have just passed, but in veteran-heavy and veteran-proud Grant County, families have yet another opportunity to honor their veterans during next month’s Wreaths Across America ceremony at Fort Bayard National Cemetery.
The official ceremony will take place at 10 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 17, and will include guest speaker Susan Parks, the new director of Santa Fe and Fort Bayard National Cemeteries, presentation of the colors by the American Legion Color Guard, music by the Hi Lo Silvers, and ceremonial wreath layings by representatives from each branch of the service, as well as POW/MIA, and the Fort Bayard Historic Preservation Society.
Prior to the actual ceremony, however, volunteers with Grant County’s Wreaths Across America planning committee and community members will gather the day before to lay thousands of wreaths on graves all across the national cemetery.
It was a scene like that one that helped create the national program that exists today.
In 1992, Merrill Worcester, owner of the Worcester Wreath Company, in Harrington, Maine, found himself with too many extra wreaths during the holiday season. Not wanting them to go to waste, he recalled a moving visit to Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C., when he was a boy and made arrangements, with the help of Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, to have the extra wreaths placed on graves in an older section of the cemetery that had received fewer visitors each year. The annual tribute went on quietly for a few years, until 2005, when a photo of the graves adorned with wreaths on a snow-covered Arlington National Cemetery went viral on the internet, sending the program into the national spotlight.
Since then, national cemeteries across the country have taken up the idea. Unable to provide thousands of wreaths to every cemetery, the Worcester family began donating seven wreaths, one for every branch of service — Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard and Merchant Marines — and one for POWs/MIAs, to national cemeteries across the country. In 2007, the Worcester family, along with others who helped with the ceremony in Arlington, formed Wreaths Across America, a nonprofit 501(c)(3), to continue and expand the effort, and support other groups around the country who wanted to do the same. The mission of the group is to “Remember, Honor and Teach.” Remember the fallen. Honor those who serve, including their families who sacrifice, and teach children the cost of freedoms. Last year, more 900,000 wreaths were placed on graves at more than 1,000 locations across the country.
Grant County’s program first began around 2009, when a veteran from El Paso wondered why there was no ceremony here. He organized it for several years, until 2011 when he passed the responsibility on to Mary Cowan, a Gold Star Mother whose son, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Aaron William Cowan, was killed Feb. 26, 2005, in a helicopter crash in Korea at the age of 37. She is also married to retired Col. Tip Cowan.
Each year, the local Wreaths Across America group encourages organizations, businesses, and individuals to sponsor a wreath to be placed on a grave during the ceremony. Wreaths cost $15, and for every two purchased, a third wreath will be donated to Fort Bayard National Cemetery.
Cowan said the group has received 1,750 wreath orders so far, but that is not nearly enough to cover all 4,200 graves at Fort Bayard, and far fewer than last year’s total of 2,079.
Folks locally and from away can make special requests to have the wreaths they order placed on specific graves at the cemetery.
“One week remains — a week from today, November 21, — is the deadline for those special requests,” Cowan said.
She said so far, requests have come in from California, Arkansas, Minnesota, and many from Arizona and Texas, and the cities of Las Cruces, El Paso and Albuquerque.
“There is an informal network of people who are friends or relatives of those buried at Fort Bayard, individuals who grew up in the Mining District or in Grant County, and they seem to spread by the word,” Cowan said.
One of those supporters is Susie Yniguez, who has driven from Tucson to attend two of the group’s five planning meetings, Cowan said.
Yniguez is the mother of two Grant County Vietnam veterans, Fred Barraza, who served in the Marines, and Robert Steve Barraza, an Army veteran who died two years ago and is buried at Fort Bayard.
“When my son died, I didn’t even know about it,” she said of the Wreaths Across America ceremony. “But when he died, I contacted Mary Cowan — I’ve known her since I was going to college at WNMU.”
Since then, Yniguez and her family have helped spread the word.
“I have three children, one in Santa Fe, one in Silver City, and one in Albuquerque, and we all do Facebook,” she said. “We have gotten really involved.”
“It shows the commitment and dedication and the kind of support for this,” Cowan said. “People thank me but I am just so fortunate to have a group of committed and talented individuals who support this effort in many different ways.”
Grave-specific orders sent by mail to Cowan need to be postmarked by Nov. 17. Mail checks made out to: Wreaths Across America, to Mary Cowan, 16 Greene Road, Silver City, NM 88061-4709.
Non-grave-specific orders can be placed online through Nov. 28 at www.wreathsacrossamerica.org. Search for Fort Bayard National Cemetery, and when ordering online, use the following Fort Bayard specific codes to make sure your wreaths are shipped to Fort Bayard National Cemetery: Location ID: NMFBNC. Group ID: NM0004.
The wreath laying is a way for those who can’t be here on Memorial Day or Veterans Day, to remember their loved one who served.
Cowan said those who miss the Nov. 17 mail-in deadline and have a grave-specific request can meet her on Nov. 20 or 21 at McDonald’s in Silver City with their checks and fill out an order form, and they will be able to have their wreaths placed on specific graves.
“Their names will not necessarily be printed in our program on Remembrance Day on Saturday, December 17,” however, Cowan said.
Wreaths will be laid at Fort Bayard from 9 to 10 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 16, for special requests, with the remainder placed on gravestones around the cemetery from 10 a.m. to noon that day.
For questions, to volunteer, or to purchase wreaths, call Mary Cowan at 575-538-2626 or email cowanm@signalpeak.net, or call 575-574-0361 or email kidddono@msn.com.
Christine Steele may be reached at christine@scdailypress.com.