Holding The Line

You may have received the picture above in an email that has been circulating widely on the internet. The email describes the annual trip that Morrill Worcester has been taking to deliver and place thousands of wreaths on the graves at Arlington National Cemetery. The Washington Post has taken note of the project this year.

E very year for more than a decade, at the height of the season, Morrill Worcester would pack up a truckload of his Christmas wreaths and head down from Maine to Arlington National Cemetery. Without fanfare, he and a dozen or so volunteers would lay red-bowed wreaths on a few thousand headstones of fallen Americans.

There was no publicity. No crowds gathered. The gesture was one man's private duty, born of a trip to Washington he won as a 12-year-old paperboy. Of all the monuments and memorials he saw, it was the visit to Arlington that stuck with him — the majesty and mystery, the sadness and the pride, the sight of all those neat rows of government-issue white headstones.

Years later, after he had started his Christmas products business, at the crunch point of one season Worcester asked some men who were building his new factory to find some wreaths and buy them for him.

They went a bit overboard: When Worcester heard that he was the proud owner of 4,000 wreaths that couldn't possibly be sold by Christmas, he called a friend who owned a trucking company, contacted his senator in Washington and, two weeks before Christmas 1992, was at Arlington, laying wreaths.

It seemed like the right thing to do. So he continued the ritual each year, honoring those who had died so that he and other Americans might live as they saw fit.

Then, a few months ago, the e-mails started. Maybe you got one: a heart-wrenching yet elegant image of Worcester's wreaths, each adorned with a simple red ribbon, resting in front of seemingly endless rows of identical gravestones on a snowy day at Arlington. Beneath the photo, a few lines of poetry:

"Rest easy, sleep well my brothers.

Know the line has held, your job is done.

Rest easy, sleep well . . . "

This year, the trip will not be a quiet affair. The Patriot Guard Riders will also accompany Worcester. And he is trying to make the campaign a national one with wreath layings at the more than 200 military cemeteries across the nation.

This year, the interest in Worcester's project has exploded to the point that he had to find some way to extend the tribute, so he has launched http://wreathsacrossamerica.org, a Web site that coordinates similar rituals at more than 200 military cemeteries around the country.

"The veterans are going to get their due," says Worcester, who never served in the military. "It's going to be quite something."

Worcester returns any checks sent to him by people. This is his personal statement, his personal project. And he is, in every sense of the word, holding the line.

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  By Quilly Mammoth, Sunday, 3 December , 2006 @ 9:47 pm

  Mr. Worchester is a great American. The YouTube video of this project is outstanding.

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  By Gaius, Sunday, 3 December , 2006 @ 10:00 pm

  I don’t know how to embed the YouTube videos.

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  By Robbie, Sunday, 3 December , 2006 @ 10:49 pm

  Just one more reason I am proud to ride with the Patriot Guard Riders. All of our missions are to honor the sacrifice made by our brave defenders, and helping escort Mr. Morrill and his wreaths fits right in with thier mission.

  God bless our troops, Mr. Morrill, and the PGR.

Other Links to this Post

1. Sister Toldjah — Sunday, 3 December , 2006 @ 10:35 pm