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The color green joined the patriotic colors of red, white and blue. Past and present veterans were honored at the Wreaths Across America ceremony on Saturday at the Missouri National Veterans Memorial Wall in Perryville
For MNVM event coordinator Julia Hogenmiller, it is a way to honor veterans during the Christmas season.
“It’s a way to honor our veterans and the sacrifices that they made for our country,” Hogenmiller said.
It was the second year that Perryville had taken part in the nationwide event.
Wreaths Across America is a national program that involves community members purchasing wreaths and donating them to decorate graves for veterans and serve as memorials for them during the holidays.
The program started as a project in Maine but quickly gained popularity and became a nationwide event. In Perryville last year, 58 wreaths were purchased by community members to donate as memorials for fallen veterans, this year’s number greatly exceeded those as 162 wreaths were donated.
After the wreaths were donated for the ceremony by Buchheit, the ceremony began at 11 a.m. to coincide with the rest of the nation’s ceremony so they all happened at the same time.
Deanna Kluender gave the ceremony’s address thanking the more than 1,700 memorial sites much like MNVM that conducted services like the one in Perryville.
We are gathered here and across the country as one nation to remember the fallen, honor those who serve and their families , and teach the next generation the value of freedom,” Kluender said.
At the end of the ceremony seven wreaths were displayed to honor the individual branches of the military, as well as the POWs and MIAs. Hogenmiller believed there was a good turnout of community members at the ceremony.
“There may have been even more,” Hogenmiller said. “Many people stayed away because of the rain that was forecasted on Saturday. We definitely plan on doing it again next year.
After the ceremony, the gifts for the second annual Adopt-A-Veteran program were distributed. Item wish lists have been collected from area Veterans organizations, Veterans homes and other assisted living/nursing homes from Cape Girardeau to Ste. Genevieve.
Items were collected since mid-November and the items were made into ornaments and other decorations on the tree and volunteers would take those decorations and fulfill the items on those decorations and bring them back to the MNVM Welcome Center to be distributed on Saturday.
There were 109 gifts, nearly double the amount of last year.
“I think people are just becoming more aware that it is happening,” Hogenmiller said of the Adopt-A-Family program. “It’s taken a while for people to know that we exist down in Perryville and I think that now that they do, we can expect an even bigger turnout for next year.”
