Scouts help pick up wreaths at Fort Snelling National Cemetery

More than 1,000 local Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, leaders, and community volunteers are honoring Minnesota veterans with an act of service. They dedicated their Saturday to helping preserve the headstones at Fort Snelling National Cemetery.

Each year, rows and rows of wreaths are placed on graves to honor the lives of veterans and their family members who are buried at the cemetery. But, by this time of year, they’re usually brown and withering.

“We put them on sleds and we bring them to this pile and we load them up on trucks,” Evan Budd, a Boy Scout said.

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The Scouts volunteered to pick up about 40,000 wreaths and return the headstones to their pristine, white condition. It’s a job that would take staff at the cemetery days to finish, but with the Scouts’ help, they’re all picked up in a day.

“We just want to make it better and more beautiful for the community for people to come and remember their loved ones.” Annika Chandler, with Troop 7045 said, “When I’m older I want to be in the military so I feel like nices to read them all and think about it and it just makes me feel like I’m doing something for the people who served up.”

The cleanup up is organized by older Scouts in the “Order of the Arrow” Kaposia Chapter and Scouting’s Society of Honor Campers. This is the 19th year of the project and the Scouts say it’s a chance for meaningful service in support of our country’s veterans.