Tue Nov 17, 2020: Pandemic Nixes Holiday Wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery
Pandemic Nixes Holiday Wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery
ARLnow.com November 16, 2020 at 10:10pm
The annual holiday wreath-laying event at Arlington National Cemetery has been cancelled this year due to the pandemic.
“Due to the current COVID-19 situation across the nation and within the [National Capital Region], it is with great regret that ANC is cancelling Wreaths Across America,” the cemetery said in a tweet Monday night.
The average daily case rate hit a new all-time high in Arlington and across Virginia today. Nationwide, the number of people hospitalized due to COVID-19 reached a new peak today.
The wreath event attracts tens of thousand of volunteers, who lay wreaths at the cemetery’s hundreds of thousands of graves a week or two before Christmas. More crowds of volunteers then help to “retire” the wreaths after the holiday.
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The first commenter beat me to it:
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Wreaths Across America: Is a Nonprofit Built on Conflict of Interest Still a Nonprofit?
Ruth McCambridge
December 11, 2018
December 10, 2018;
Times Record
If one were to look at organizational scaling as success, Wreaths Across America would definitely be a model; it has seen phenomenal growth in contributions from $227,000 in 2011 to $14.6 million last year to support its work of laying wreaths at the graves of veterans. The only problem is that the same family that controls the charity also runs Worcester Wreath, the company that supplies and profits from the wreaths. This, of course, is the essence of self-dealing, though after being challenged the nonprofit now discloses this relationship on its website and in all of its reporting.
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NEW: There will be no holiday wreath event at Arlington National Cemetery this year
= new reply since forum marked as read