Scouts from across Suffolk County placed American Flags on each of the graves at Calverton National Cemetery this morning. That’s a tall order at the nation’s busiest national cemetery, where more than 6,000 burials take place every year, with the total number of graves approaching a quarter-million. But the Scouts, who have now been handling the task for 23 years running, have the process down to a science and complete the job in about an hour.
Promptly at 9:30 a.m. Girl Scouts from Service Unit 60, which takes in the North Fork, fanned out across Section 4A, flags in hand. Theirs was one of three service units decorating the graves of Section 4A. A troop leader reminded them to go about the work “reverently,” and to take the time to read each of the brass markers. “Think about who they are. Think about and remember them,” she told the girls.
“The girls who come to do this each year really want to be here,” said Nicole B. Brewer of Cutchogue, leader of Troop 1474. “It means something to them.”
Each year, they seem to take home some special experience, she said. Last year, a man stood at the edge of the field, watching them. When they were finished, he approached two of the girls and told them he was the son of a veteran buried in Section 4A, whose grave they had decorated with a flag.
“He gave us a coin. It’s some kind of an Army coin,” said one of the girls, Samantha Hildesheim, a member of Troop 1474.
This year, the girls discovered one of the flags packed away for decorating the graves had a flagpole inscribed with a message from (or about) the great-grandson of a veteran buried somewhere at the cemetery. It read: “Thank you Gpa Rob. Your great-grandson Sawyer Michael visited first time 5-25-15.”
Samantha said she and other Scouts searched the graves in Section 4A to find one for a man with the last name Michael or Sawyer — hoping to place the inscribed flag on it. But there was no grave with either name in the section.
“The annual flag placement event is one of the most important things we do as Scouts,” Brewer said.
The impact of the day was felt by Veronica McFarlin, whose son Lorenzo is a member of Cub Pack 242 in Riverhead, which was among the troops decorating the graves in Section 10.
“I moved here from Brazil four years ago,” she said. “The first time I saw the field of flags after they were done with the ceremony was breathtaking. It’s quite a sight,” she said. “In Brazil, for things like this, you hire people. Here you’re part of your community, your nation. It’s important for the kids.”
Calverton National Cemetery, one of two on Long Island, opened in 1978. Its takes in a little over 1,000 acres of land. More than 3,000 people who served in World War I are buried at Calverton National. Tens of thousands more who served in World War II are also buried there, including flying ace Francis S. Gabreski, for whom the Air National Guard base in Westhampton is named.
There is only one Medal of Honor recipient buried at Calverton National, Lt. Michael P. Murphy, a U.S. Navy SEAL who was killed in Afghanistan on June 28, 2005. Murphy, 29, a Suffolk County native who grew up in Patchogue, was killed during Operation Red Wings, a counter-insurgent mission in Kunar province, Afghanistan. He is interred in Section 67 (Grave 3710).
The Medal of Honor is the nation’s highest military honor, awarded for personal acts of valor above and beyond the call of duty. Since 2001, 17 Americans have been awarded the Medal of Honor, six of them, including Murphy, posthumously.
SoutholdLOCAL photos by Denise Civiletti
