Saturday was the annual Wreaths Across America event.
The 11th annual ceremony was held at National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona in Phoenix.
It involved volunteers from across the country laying wreaths on veterans’ tombstones.
“The first year that we had the Wreaths Across America services, we only received 300 wreaths,” Jerald Nowdomski, who is with the National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona.
“This year we received 8,300.”
According to Nowdomski, the undersecretary of Memorial Affairs' mission is to make sure no veteran ever dies.
“How do you do that?” Nowdomski asked rhetorically. “By making sure that you never forget them. So you take opportunities like this to come out here and make sure you remember those veterans, and their service.”
“It’s unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable,” Mike Sullivan, a volunteer from Mesa, said.
“If you just look around, there’s, I think, 60,000-plus veterans [or veterans’ families]…and they are the reason why you and I are here today to stand here and be able to do this because they protected our freedom.”
In addition to Arlington National Cemetery, there are more than 1,600 additional locations, according to WreathsAcrossAmerica.org.