Wreaths Across America Remembers Fallen Veterans
Wreaths Across America Day 2021 was Saturday, December 18th.
In southern New Hampshire we celebrated Wreaths Across America Day 2021 with a 12 p.m. event at Last Rest Cemetery in Merrimack. The ceremony featured an Honor Guard, the laying of nine ceremonial wreaths and the playing of Taps. More than 300 volunteers then dispersed around the cemetery, placing over 525 wreaths on the graves of fallen servicepersons.
Jennifer DeFelice of Wreaths Across America is joined by David Tille, Erin Segaloff, and Katie Tovar Paciulan of Harbor Care’s Veterans FIRST.
Harbor Care’s Veterans FIRST staff -- Director of Veteran Services David Tille, Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) Program Manager Erin Segaloff, and SSVF Assistant Program Manager Katie Tovar Paciulan -- joined local Wreaths Across America organizer Jennifer Defelice on this day of reverence for our community, and our nation.
David Tille spoke to the assembled attendees and volunteers:
Hello everyone!
l would like to thank all of our veterans who are with us today. Thank you so much for your service.
Jennifer DeFelice, David Tille, and over 300 volunteers joined in Merrimack to lay wreaths at the graves of fallen military personnel.
I’m honored to be here with you, not only as the Director of Veteran Services at Harbor Care’s Veterans FIRST, but as an Army veteran and proud son of a retired Air Force Vietnam veteran who is with me today. On this day, we honor our veterans who rest in peace here at Last Rest Cemetery by the placement of wreaths upon their grave sites. What a beautiful gesture and way for us to honor them through an act of thoughtful kindness.
Wreaths Across America, in fact started through such a thoughtful act of kindness when the Worcester Wreath Company, having a surplus of wreathes, brought them to be placed on the grave sites of our veterans at Arlington National Cemetery to honor them.
But not just any sites, but those grave sites that were older and less visited.
Today, Wreaths Across America volunteers have placed more than 3 million wreaths in over 3,000 locations across the United States and abroad honoring all who served in our Armed Forces.
Here in Merrimack, we will place well over 500 wreathes at Last Rest with the help of over 300 local volunteers. All through what began as a small thoughtful act of kindness honoring our veterans - that multiplied and multiplied.
This is a tremendous day.
As we honor those who have passed, we should also show our gratitude to our veterans while they are with us, while we have the opportunity. Not just through medals and plaques, but with things we take for granted every day: food, shelter, care and support.
Many of our veterans are in need - suffering from untreated mental illness, addictions, hardships, and the physical and mental scars of combat. Many of our veterans need a place to call home. Here in the Granite State, there are over 100 veterans today experiencing homelessness - and finding a home for these veterans is the first step in finding healing.
At Harbor Care’s Veterans FIRST, we help over 400 veterans and their families annually with transitional and permanent housing assistance; health, mental health and dental assistance; vocational assistance and jobs, and personal casework and outreach. At Harbor Care Veterans FIRST, I witness an outpouring of both small and large acts of kindness, from hundreds of Granite Staters, honoring our veterans by supporting our efforts to end veteran homelessness.
Recently, I was surprised to find boxes upon boxes of Christmas stocking care packages thoughtfully put together for each of our veterans for all of our housing locations; these gifts even included hand-crocheted scarves. When I saw one of the opened Christmas cards in these stockings, thanking our veterans for their service, it was signed “the Merrimack American Legion and VFW.”
Thank you for your heartwarming, thoughtful, and generous acts of kindness. May these acts of kindness multiply and multiply for our veterans to ensure that no veteran seeking shelter and housing should ever be forced to sleep on the street.
Let’s make it our legacy to end homelessness among our veterans. May these acts of kindness multiply and multiply to ensure that all veterans are honored and taken care of in both life and after their passing.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak and to join you in the placing of wreaths in honor of our veterans.
--David Tille
Wreaths Across America Day in 2022 will be December 17th.