Steven Henshaw: There's a strong volunteer effort in Berks to place flags on veterans' graves

May 25—On her daily stroll with her dog through Gethsemane Cemetery, Elizabeth Lebo would notice the cemetery maintenance crew was engaged in a particularly laborious task every year as the Memorial Day weekend approached.

The workers would be placing American flags on the bronze holders in front of the headstones of the hundreds of veterans buried across 75 acres rising from Kutztown Road in Laureldale.

"You would always see these poor guys all walking the grounds, trying to do it all by themselves," she said.

At Gethsemane, the preparation for the past three Memorial Day weekends has looked different. There have been volunteers to help in the COVID era.

On Wednesday morning, dozens of volunteers, many of them students at nearby Holy Guardian Angels School, fanned out from the cemetery headquarters, placing the small flags on graves of veterans, many of whom served in the nation's two great wars.

As they have since 2020, Lebo and her friend Elaine Hahn each lent a hand — just one each because the other held the leash of a dog.

Seeing the children take part in the activity is uplifting, they said.

"It's nice that these kids become aware of the sacrifices of these guys who gave their lives," Lebo said.

So what changed in 2020?

It starts with the pandemic and Gov. Tom Wolf's shutdown order directed at all nonessential business and services in spring 2020 to curtail the spread of COVID-19.

Some 53,000 flags were scheduled for distribution in late April 2020 to Berks cemetery partners and volunteers, but the manufacturer of the flags was considered a nonessential business and all shipments were put on hold.

It looked like Berks cemeteries and many other cemeteries wouldn't be decorated with the Stars and Stripes in time for Memorial Day.

The news broke Mary Kozak's heart.

The daughter of a World War II veteran who survived the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Kozak, the Berks County recorder of deeds, drew on her support and resources as an elected row officer.

Under pressure from legislators and veterans groups, the Wolf administration granted manufacturer FlagZone LLC near Gilbertsville a waiver a week before Memorial Day in 2020 so its flag shipments to counites could go out.

The Berks County Department of Veterans Affair distributed boxes of flags from the BARTA garage at Eighth and Cherry streets in downtown Reading.

That left little time to get the flags on the graves at 233 Berks cemeteries.

It was Kozak's social media that helped the most, spreading the word like a wind-fueled wildfire.

"I was just amazed one post went that far," Kozak said. "During the pandemic, when everyone was on lockdown, it was such a great thing."

People who worked in the recorder of deeds office volunteered to distribute the flags, as did veteran motorcycle organizations, Veterans of Foreign Wars posts, high school students and Holy Guardian Angels students, to name a few.

And many have been returning year after year, said Kozak, who joined the volunteer army Wednesday at Gethsemane and St. Mary's Cemetery in Millmont.

Kozak said she still spreads the word, and reminds those who come out to remember to do so next year, but it's reached the point where people already plan to make decorating graves of veterans part of their routine the week before Memorial Day.

"I'm just so amazed this is the third year ... and it (the volunteer participation) still goes on," she said.

Thirty adults and nearly as many children turned out at Gethsemane and St. Mary's for Wednesday's effort, said Tim Kolasa, Gethsemane Cemetery executive director.

Kolasa said Kozak was instrumental in 2020 in getting the word out that first year because Gethsemane staff would not have had the time to place flags on every veteran grave due to the delay in shipment.

The response from the community shows how much support there is in Berks for veterans, said Kolasa, a Marine veteran who has a son serving in the Marine Corps.

Two Holy Guardian Angels seventh graders, Moises Zavala and Matthew Sharer, both of Reading, were amazed to find graves of veterans of World War I, marveling over the birth dates in the late 1800s.

It felt good, they said, to do something to honor the warriors who fought for their country.

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