DENVER — Every December, volunteers place wreaths on the graves of veterans at Fort Logan National Cemetery — a solemn tradition that honors their service and sacrifice. But this year, many graves may go without one.
Only about 14,000 wreaths have been donated for the more than 140,000 service members laid to rest at the cemetery, according to the nonprofit ColoradoHonor. That’s enough to cover just 10 percent of the graves, and there are thousands fewer donations than last year.
Barbara Schneider said she’s been participating in wreath donations ever since her brother, John Parker, died in 2021.
“John had always wanted to be in a veterans cemetery,” she said. “John was very much into the military, and that was, you know, very touching to him.”
Parker served in both the Army and the Air Force. He was drafted out of college during the Vietnam War — “the last group out of our county, Sedgwick County in Julesburg, Colorado,” Schneider said — and spent two years in Okinawa. He later joined the Air Force and flew missions during the Gulf War.
“He was very outgoing, loyal to a fault, with his friends that he'd had like, I say, since they were born,” Schneider said. “He liked the structure, I think, and especially the higher up he got.”
Schneider said her pride in her brother drives her to give to the wreath program.
“Every year, you know, they take care of putting one on his grave, but I give so that many others can have them too,” she said. “Knowing that they have a physical remembrance that somebody has remembered them.”
ColoradoHonor founder David Bolser said the idea for the nonprofit came when he and other volunteers noticed how many graves lacked wreaths.
“We were walking through the cemetery after we donated these wreaths, and our board chairman, Craig Butterfield, said, Look, 95% of these graves don't have a wreath,” Bolser said. “The rest of them don't. And that's what it was, bare gravestones, you know, on Christmas morning — just that image. That's what did it.”
Bolser said that each grave represents more than just a name.
“On the front of all of these 220-pound white marble gravestones, there's a name, and that name carries an extended family with it,” he said. Volunteers are instructed to “place the wreath, read the name out loud, and then salute.”
He added that his ultimate goal is to place a wreath on every grave.
“I think that number is almost irrelevant when you consider that there are 140,000 that are there, and so that's the ultimate goal,” Bolser said.
For Schneider, that mission is personal.
“As time goes by, sometimes the real hard pain of losing a loved one ebbs, but around the holidays, you know you still have their spirit and their memories,” she said.
Colorado Honor is continuing its donation drive in hopes of reaching more families and supporters before the wreaths are placed later this season. You can donate at the ColoradoHonor website. Donations are accepted until midnight on Thanksgiving Day.
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