Wreaths Across America mobile exhibit returns to St. Cloud

With St. Cloud’s Mount Peace Cemetery and Kissimmee’s Rose Hill Cemetery being two of only five cemeteries in the Greater Orlando area actively partnering with Wreath Across America (WAA), it is no surprise that WAA’s Mobile Education Exhibit (MEE) literally rolled into Centennial Park on April 14. This is the first exhibit in St. Cloud since 2021.

Best known for placing evergreen wreaths with a bright red bow, on row upon row of veterans’ graves in an often-snowy Arlington Cemetery each year at Christmas, Wreaths Across America not only honors veterans in Arlington National Cemetery, but at over 2,500 locations in the U.S., at sea, and abroad. While soldiers assigned to the Washington D.C. area place a small American flag at every grave in Arlington for each Memorial Day, neither the U.S. military nor the federal government provide decorations for veterans’ graves during other times of the year.

Locally, area veterans organizations have been placing WAA wreaths on veterans’ graves at Mount Peace every December for over ten years. Last year a WAA wreath-laying ceremony was held at the Rose Hill Cemetery for the first time, sponsored by Kissimmee’s American Legion Post 10.

While the annual wreath-laying effort is WAA’s most visible effort to honor veterans, the Mobile Education Exhibit is used to achieve WAA’s core mission to “Remember the fallen, Honor those who serve, and Teach our children the value of Freedom.” The front section of the 48-footlong exhibit is an educational wall of informational panels on different aspects of WAA, and plans for future years. The exhibit also has a 24-seat screening room that highlights the different aspects of the WAA mission, and the services and sacrifices of our nation’s military, through video. The screening room also contains a “Missing Man” table display, honoring Prisoners of War, and those still Missing in Action from America’s wars. The American Legion Auxiliary Unit #80 sponsored Sunday’s event, partly as a fundraiser for the annual Mount Peace Cemetery wreath laying event this December.

St. Cloud was the eighth Florida stop on the MEE’s 14-stop April tour through the state. The tour began in North Carolina in January, and worked its way south into Florida.

“We spent three days at the Sun N Fun Fly-In at the Lakeland Airport before coming to St. Cloud,” said Richard Schnieder, WAA Ambassador.

The next stop on the tour was Sebring, in Highlands County. In May the tour rolls through Tennessee and Ohio, across the Midwest during summer and fall, and ending up in the Northeast by winter.

For more information on the Wreaths Across America and the American Legion Auxiliary partnership, see https://bit.ly/44965jd.