Local group to decorate veterans’ graves with Christmas wreaths

A local organization is passing out Christmas wreaths to a select group of veterans who are no longer with us to take part in holiday festivities.

The Waco Composite Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol on Saturday will lay Christmas wreaths on the graves of veterans buried at Oakwood Cemetery.

The effort is part of the national Wreaths Across America Program that the Civil Air Patrol supports to honor veterans during the holiday season.

The Baylor University Army and Air Force ROTC units will assist in the program, as well as JROTC units from various McLennan County high schools.

“It’s to honor our veterans, the people who’ve taken time out of their lives and some who have given their lives for this country,” said Jason Unwin, deputy commander of the Waco Composite Squadron. “These are people who took time to defend their nation, and they should be honored.”

Unwin said the chapter raised enough money to order 79 wreaths through Wreaths Across America. That’s up from the 59 wreaths the group raised in 2012 when it first started the annual project.

But the group fell short of its original goal of adorning all of the veterans’ graves at Oakwood. The cemetery is the final resting place for at least 500 veterans, Oakwood General Manager John Hubble said.

‘Ultimate goal’

“Ideally, the ultimate goal is to raise enough funds to decorate the graves of every veteran out there,” Unwin said. “The biggest thing is trying to get the word out that this is our mission and getting people to contribute to it.”

For now, the group will concentrate on an area in the center of Oakwood that has a high concentration of veteran graves.

Unwin said the chapter, which focuses on promoting the aviation and aerospace fields, aims to partner with area businesses to set up collection jars and potentially recruit sponsors.

The wreath-laying project is among a number of local efforts focused on veterans during the Christmas season.

For example, the Waco Veterans Affairs Medical Center will have a dinner for veterans next week, while homeless veterans will be among those treated to a Christmas Day dinner at the Meyer Center.

Lloyd Coffman, president of the McLennan County Veterans Association, said Christmastime doesn’t generate the same level of attention for veterans as holidays like Veterans Day and Memorial Day, which were established specifically to honor living and deceased veterans.

Hubble noted that the Connally High School ROTC group places flags on the veterans’ graves at Oakwood each year for Veterans Day, for example. The veterans association organizes a grand ceremony for Memorial Day as well as the annual Veteran’s Day parade, one of the city’s largest downtown events.

“There are a few groups that do something,” Coffman said. “A lot of groups will do packages, getting Christmas cards and things like that out to the vets serving overseas.”

Some local veterans are focused on ways to give back to the community during the holidays. Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 6008 is collecting toys for children for Project Angel Tree, and the Heart of Texas Young Marines assisted in H-E-B’s Feast of Sharing dinner Thursday night at the Extraco Events Center.

Coffman said he hopes to round up a group of veterans this year who will each speak at Christmas programs at local churches, reading a version of “ ’Twas The Night Before Christmas” that was written by a U.S. Marine to recognize the sacrifices military members make for their country.

“The emphasis is more so on the living than the ones who have passed (at Christmas),” Coffman said.