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US businessman honors country's fallen with Christmas wreaths

Every December for the past 14 years, Morrill Worcester loads a truck with thousands of Christmas wreaths and drives to Arlington National Cemetery near the US capital to honor the country's fallen.

With the help of volunteers he lays some 5,000 of the ornaments decorated with a simple red bow on the headstones of war heroes buried in an older part of the cemetery that receives few visitors.

"It's the least I can do because of what they've all done for us," Worcester, 56, who owns a wreaths company in the eastern state of Maine told AFP in a telephone interview.

Several hundred people are expected to turn out for this year's wreath-laying event December 14 at Arlington, the second-largest national cemetery in the country with more than 300,000 war veterans are buried, along with two US presidents, explorers and other dignitaries.

Worcester this year is also spreading his goodwill gesture nationwide by donating six wreaths to each of the 230 state cemeteries or veterans' monuments across the United States.

He said the ritual that began in 1992 was born of a boyhood trip to Washington that left him awestruck by the majesty of the Arlington National Cemetery and overwhelmed by the thousands of white headstones lined in its neat rows.

It was also the result of an over-abundance of wreaths he had that year and that would have gone to waste.

"I had about 5,000 too many wreaths and I thought of Arlington and made arrangements to drive down there," he said.

John Metzler, the superintendent of the cemetery, said he never thought Worcester would keep coming back every December after that first year.

"I thought it would be a one-time donation and then he would go on to other things," Metzler told AFP. "But this has been taken on a life of its own and it's to the point now where he will never get away from this.

"This is a legacy now." more