LEWISTON — The city of Lewiston helps to recruit volunteers to place almost 7,500 flags by veterans’ gravestones in the cemeteries around the city before Memorial Day. Volunteers are needed for the project at the following locations:
Riverside Cemetery, 192 Summer St.: Meet at 9 a.m. Thursday, May 21; rain date, Friday, May 22. The Knights of Columbus are the coordinators for this location. Contact Leo Baillargeon at 207-784-0389 for more information. There are approximately 1,600 flags to be placed in the cemetery.
St. Peter’s Cemetery, Switzerland Road: Meet at 10 a.m. Saturday, May 23, rain or shine, at the cemetery mausoleum. Jerry Dewitt is the contact person for that day and the L/A Veterans Council coordinates for the location. There are approximately 4,000 flags to be placed.
The plan is to assign teams of five to 10 volunteers to an area of the cemeteries and to cover them in a grid fashion in order to not miss any stone. There is no master list of veterans buried at the cemetery, so volunteers will need to walk each row of stones and read the inscription on each gravesite. If military service is listed on the stone, a flag will be placed there. This is a fairly time-consuming process, so many volunteers are appreciated.
The state passed a law in 2001 that requires municipalities to purchase and place individual American flags at the gravestone of every veteran buried in each cemetery in that town. The flags must be in place for Memorial Day each year. Lewiston has 13 cemeteries and places almost 7,500 flags. All work is done by community volunteers. For many of the smaller cemeteries, the abutting neighbors usually place the flags each year.
For more information, contact City Clerk Kathy Montejo, kmontejo@lewistonmaine.gov or 207-513-3124.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Comments are no longer available on this story