Mason City cemetery to honor veterans by participating in “Wreaths Across America” program Saturday morning

MASON CITY — Elmwood St. Joseph Cemetery in Mason City on Saturday is partnering for the first time with Wreaths Across America, a global movement placing live wreaths on the grave markers of veterans.

Cemetery manager Tyler Anderson says Mason City will be one site throughout the world where millions of wreaths are placed in the time of the holiday season.  “We’ve made it a season of giving, but it’s also been receiving, and a lot more on the receiving end. How cool is it to slow down and say ‘hey these people have given their lives to serve us so we can have these freedoms like the Christmas season’.  Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we have this thankfulness, this season of gratitude and giving, so it just seems like the perfect to do something like this.”

Anderson says his steering team hoped to get somewhere around 200 wreaths ordered by people for the event, but over 900 wreaths will be placed tomorrow as part of the program.   “The response has just been so humbling and so overwhelming. To go from  200, and I was internally stretching for 400 wreaths, to end up with over 920 wreaths coming, just to give people perspective, our cemetery has a little over 2300 total veterans in it, and so it’s almost half.”

Anderson says the biggest thing now is they need volunteers to help place the wreaths.   “The great part about that is it’s so straightforward. There’s no pre-signing up,  you don’t have to call us, you don’t have to find some website or hit some QR code. We start at 11 o’clock at the cemetery. Something unique about that is everywhere in the entire country does it at the same time, so there will be millions of wreaths being placed at the same time across the country, so it’s really a powerful moment for everybody.”

Anderson says the ceremony at 11 o’clock will take place inside the front entry of the cemetery off of South Federal Avenue. The event will take place no matter the weather conditions.