My view trailing the Convoy as I headed to meet them in Danbury. Slow going, but it gave me time to think.All pictures by Alex Lockie for Overdrive
I had followed the convoy clear across New England, having driven three hours south from Vermont to catch the Wreaths crew at Western Connecticut State University, but suddenly found myself sitting in parking-lot-style traffic as the convoy’s police escort blocked us to make way. When finally the convoy did pass, we crept behind the tail end of the police escort doing a steady 50 mph.
“This convoy is going to make me late to see the convoy,” I thought to myself, without a hint of self-awareness. Angry, traffic-induced thoughts kept shooting through my head. “Why do they have to take up the whole highway? Why can’t they go any faster?”
As time passed, I thought more. Why does trucking, in many ways a collection of some of the most ingeniously practical people in the world, make its biggest holiday statement with something so symbolic and decorative as a wreath? With 12 trucks from 11 carriers participating in the meandering haul from Wreaths headquarters in Maine to Arlington National Cemetery outside D.C., it's quite the draw.
I bah-humbugged-it like that at 50 or so mph all the way to the venue, finally shuffling into an auditorium filled with police, fire and military veterans in full dress blues carrying their various flags, staffs, and rifles. Soon, I'd have answers to all my questions, and so much more.
The speakers at the ceremony detailed the military and otherwise official aspects of Wreaths Across America, recognizing state representatives, veterans among the audience, the police and fire chiefs, members of the civil air patrol, and probably half a dozen other local leaders. They began to explain the symbolism, that the wreaths would be placed on graves of fallen veterans, their names read aloud, and that the wreaths would sit for as long as the historic Battle of the Bulge had carried on at the height of World War II.
After the color guards marched and the National Anthem played, speakers took turns describing what the event meant to them. On the middle left see Jean Mariano standing next to Danbury's Mayor.
Jean Mariano, a Gold Star mother, meaning the mother of a fallen service member (in Mariano's case a member of the elite U.S. Navy SEALs) and local to the area around Danbury, spoke lovingly about the young man she had lost and how it gave her a chance to become involved in the program. Every year, she reads the names out of 700 fallen service members and places a wreath on each grave, and in doing so she's seemed to find herself just a little bit more at peace with what had happened to her son, and the sons and daughters of so many others like her.
