A duty, an honor that grows and grows

By Kevin Ferris

"For the third year in a row, on the second Saturday of December, I traveled to Arlington National Cemetery to place Christmas wreaths on the graves of the fallen.

I'm late to the party, as some people have been coming since the early '90s, when Morrill Worcester, a wreath wholesaler from Maine, showed up at Arlington with his first tractor-trailer load of that season's leftovers.

That year, as Worcester told the crowd at Arlington last weekend, the reaction at the cemetery was part "You want to do what?" and "Who's gonna clean this up?" Then, a handful of volunteers spent about six hours placing 5,000 wreaths.

Times have definitely changed."