More than 6,500 volunteers placed flags on more than 225,000 graves Saturday at Calverton National Cemetery in preparation for Memorial Day on Monday.
It was the 21st annual flag placement day at the national cemetery by Suffolk County Scout troops.
The Scouts and their family members began placing flags at 9:30 Saturday morning and had all graves decorated in about half an hour. They will return next Saturday morning (rain date: Sunday at 1 p.m.) to pick up the flags, as they do each year.
Calverton National Cemetery director Michael Picerno thanked the Scouts and their families at a ceremony in the cemetery’s assembly area following the flag placement.
“There’s no way we could decorate all 225,000 graves without you,” Picerno said.
The nation’s busiest national cemetery opened in 1978. It conducts about 6,000 burials each year.
“More than 3,000 people who served in World War I are buried here,” Picerno told those gathered in the assembly area. “That was 100 years ago. They were born in the 1800s,” he said. “They probably don’t have a lot of relatives around to remember them and mark their graves. Without you, it would not be done,” he said.
When Picerno requested a show of hands, some who were seated on folding chairs before the assembly area stage indicated they’ve been coming to flag placement day for 20 years . Many have been participating for 10 years — and most in attendance have been placing flags on graves for Memorial Day for at least five years.
“You are doing something important for some who may have sacrificed one year or five years serving their country, and for others who made the ultimate sacrifice,” Picerno told them. “Thank you.”
Fred Bryant, owner of Bryant Funeral Home in East Setauket, which sponsors the flag placement ceremony, told the volunteers that the American flags say “You are not forgotten.”
“As a funeral director, I deal all the time with people who are elderly or ill, and their biggest fear is that they will be forgotten,” Bryant said. “Today you made sure they are not forgotten.”
SoutholdLOCAL photos by Denise Civiletti
