Several Vermont mothers are working to collect enough wreaths this holiday season to adorn more than 4,000 veteran gravesites across the state. Among the moms is Susan Sweetser, whose daughter, Virginia, took her own life in December 2020 at age 39 following a yearslong battle with post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from military service in Iraq.
“This is the one tangible thing I can focus on during the holidays,” Sweetser said through tears.
The collection effort is ahead of the Wreaths Across America event, an annual ceremony during which volunteers lay wreaths on gravestones to honor fallen vets. This year’s event is scheduled for December 16.
Sweetser, 64, of Essex, attended her first ceremony in 2021 at the Vermont Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Randolph, where her daughter is buried. The event saddened her: The cemetery had only 300 wreaths to distribute among 3,000 veteran gravesites, she said. Sweetser said she “vowed to never let that happen again.”
She spent last fall calling around to drum up donations and media coverage — skills she used in 1996 as the Republican candidate running for the U.S. House against then-incumbent Bernie Sanders (I-Vt). With her help, the cemetery collected more than 1,500 wreaths, enough to cover about half of its gravesites.
Sweetser has an even more ambitious goal this year. With the help of other grieving mothers, she has set out to secure enough wreaths to cover every Randolph gravesite, as well as those at five other cemeteries where veterans are buried across the state. They’ve made a big dent thanks to donations from several businesses and nonprofits, including Shaw’s supermarkets, which plans to provide more than 1,500 wreaths. But the group still has some 1,600 to go and only a few weeks left.
Sweetser pointed to the Vermont troupe’s Wreaths Across America web page — bit.ly/VWAA — where people can sponsor a wreath for $17 until November 26. They can also register to volunteer. Donations, in the form of time or wreaths, go a long way, Sweetser said.
“It means that our children aren’t forgotten,” she said, “and that the sacrifices of our veterans are remembered.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Laid to Rest”
This article appears in The Winter Preview Issue 2023.
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