Local scouts honor veterans with flags in cemetery
Local scouts in Breckenridge showed their respect for U.S. military veterans this Memorial Day by placing flags on the graves of veterans in the Breckenridge City Cemetery.
Scouts from Boy Scout Troop 63 and Cub Scout Pack 81, along with parent volunteers, walked through the cemetery on Saturday morning, May 25, looking for graves with veterans’ foot stones on them, and placed a flag on those graves.
The local VFW Post typically hosts a Memorial Day service at the Veterans Memorial at the Stephens County Courthouse, but they canceled it this year because recent rains made it difficult to have the event in the grass. Because the ground is so saturated, the organizers of the event were worried that the chairs for the guests to sit on would sink into the soft ground and cause problems for many of the attendees, who often are elderly and disabled.
According to Russell Blue, president of the VFW Post 7767 Auxiliary, the organization plans to reschedule the memorial event in June. As soon as a date is confirmed, the Breckenridge Texan will post the information.
Memorial Day, which honors those who died in military service to the United States, was first observed as a national event on May 30, 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War. It was originally known as Decoration Day because the graves were decorated with flowers. By the late 1800s, the holiday was known as Memorial Day, but it was still commonly called Decoration Day until World War II. The name was officially changed to Memorial Day in 1967.
Scouts Karson Vandygriff, 9, and Maggie Wunsch, 9, look for veterans’ graves to place flags. (Photo by Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan)
Cutline, top photo: Cub Scout James Hise, 8, places a flag on the grave of a veteran in the Breckenridge City Cemetery on Saturday. (Photo by Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan)
Editor’s Note: This article was updated at 12:30 p.m. Monday, May 27, with additional information about the VFW’s memorial event.
