A small Adirondack community joined towns & cities across the nation in giving a holiday tribute to Veterans. The idea that started with a wreath maker in Maine to place Christmas wreaths on every grave at Arlington National Cemetery, has now spread across the nation. At thousands of cemeteries, volunteers placed wreaths on the graves of Veterans, including every veteran at the Saint Bernard’s & United Methodist Cemetery in Lyon Mountain, New York.
Attending this year’s ceremony was a Canadian Mountie who came to represent Canada in paying respects to a former member of the R-C-M-P who is buried in the St. Bernard’s Cemetery. Christmas Wreaths were placed on the grave of every veteran buried at the Saint Bernard’s and United Methodist Cemetery, more than 160 in this cemetery alone.
Also attending this year were three Civil War re-enactors from Vermont, who joined in a wreath-laying ceremony later in the day at a small graveyard on lower Chateaugay Lake, where Peter Siskavich’s great-great grandfather, Edgar Shutts, a civil war veteran, is buried.