Today, Saturday, December 19 is National Wreaths Across America Day.
Its mission to remember our fallen U.S. veterans; honor those who serve and teach children the value of freedom.
Cemetery Association President Jeffrey Bingham Mead was invited by the Greenwich chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution to attend a ceremony at Tomac Cemetery in Old Greenwich. You'll see from the images that snow did not deter anyone from holding this event.
Tomac Cemetery is the oldest existing burying ground in town. It is where my original ancestors who settled in North America in the early seventeenth century are interred.
It is also the location of a memorial gravestone marker commemorating Greenwich, Connecticut 350th founding in 1990. The memorial stone was carved by Peacock Memorials in Valhalla, New York.
Support for the creating and installation of the stone was made possible by Jeffrey Bingham Mead, Mead family descendant Ms. Helen Leale Harper, Jr., and other family descendants across the USA.
Harper -now deceased- was the granddaughter of Dr. Charles Leale, the first doctor to attend to President Abraham Lincoln after being shot by John Wilkes Booth in Ford's Theater, Washington, D.C.
Today's ceremony was a coordinating wreath-laying effort that included others at more than 1,600 locations in all fifty states, at sea and abroad.
Mead was also invited to attend its ceremony by the Friends of The Old Burying Ground at Byram Shore Road -not far from my Greenwich residence. Unfortunately due to a scheduling conflict he was unable to attend.
