Pandemic Nixes Holiday Wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery
Last edited Tue Nov 17, 2020, 09:25 AM - Edit history (1)
Source: ARLnow.com
Pandemic Nixes Holiday Wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery
ARLnow.com November 16, 2020 at 10:10pm
The annual holiday wreath-laying event at Arlington National Cemetery has been cancelled this year due to the pandemic.
"Due to the current COVID-19 situation across the nation and within the [National Capital Region], it is with great regret that ANC is cancelling Wreaths Across America," the cemetery said in a tweet Monday night.
The average daily case rate hit a new all-time high in Arlington and across Virginia today. Nationwide, the number of people hospitalized due to COVID-19 reached a new peak today.
The wreath event attracts tens of thousand of volunteers, who lay wreaths at the cemetery's hundreds of thousands of graves a week or two before Christmas. More crowds of volunteers then help to "retire" the wreaths after the holiday.
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Read more: https://www.arlnow.com/2020/11/16/pandemic-cancels-holiday-wreaths-at-arlington-national-cemetery/
The first commenter beat me to it:
Smiley456 8 hours ago edited
https://www.arlnow.com/2020/11/16/pandemic-cancels-holiday-wreaths-at-arlington-national-cemetery/#comment-5154585861
Fine with me. WAA is a con job and people that buy their wreaths are unwitting suckers.
The same family that controls the charity also runs Worcester Wreath, the company that supplies and profits from the wreaths. Revenues in 2017 exceeded fourteen million dollars. This is the essence of self-dealing.
The charity could buy wreaths from local businesses close to the cemeteries on which they will be laid. But, nooooooo. This is a profit making endeavor....
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/wreaths-across-america-is-a-nonprofit-built-on-conflict-of-interest-still-a-nonprofit/
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CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Wreaths Across America: Is a Nonprofit Built on Conflict of Interest Still a Nonprofit?
Ruth McCambridge
December 11, 2018
December 10, 2018; Times Record
https://www.timesrecord.com/articles/business/as-wreaths-across-america-has-grown-so-has-scrutiny-about-its-practices/
If one were to look at organizational scaling as success, Wreaths Across America would definitely be a model; it has seen phenomenal growth in contributions from $227,000 in 2011 to $14.6 million last year to support its work of laying wreaths at the graves of veterans. The only problem is that the same family that controls the charity also runs Worcester Wreath, the company that supplies and profits from the wreaths. This, of course, is the essence of self-dealing, though after being challenged the nonprofit now discloses this relationship on its website and in all of its reporting.
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NEW: There will be no holiday wreath event at Arlington National Cemetery this year
Link to tweet
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,393 posts)Thu May 14, 2020: Wreaths Across America Has Family Ties to Its Supplier
I'm clearing out old newspapers. This article in The Wall Street Journal. caught my eye. It's from 2015. I don't know if the financial ties are still in place.
Wreaths Across America Has Family Ties to Its Supplier
The charity exclusively buys its military grave decorations from a closely linked Maine company
By Michael M. Phillips
Dec. 21, 2015 6:26 pm ET
Each Christmas, the charity Wreaths Across America places millions of dollars in decorations on military graves at Arlington National Cemetery and elsewhere, in what has become a national remembrance of the countrys fallen.
Tax filings, court documents and interviews, however, reveal a distinctly commercial aspect to the charitys operations.
The...
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Stacy Johnson, Money Talks NewsDecember 14, 2015
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But the wreaths that Wreaths Across America uses arent free and theyre not donated. Theyre paid for with donated money. Individuals pay $15 to sponsor one wreath, $30 to sponsor two, and so on. The organizations online form explains its most popular donation is $75 to sponsor five wreaths. ... And therein lies a potential problem with the way this nonprofit operates.
Wreaths Across America was started by a for-profit company that makes and sells wreaths ... According to its website, Wreaths Across America was founded in 2007 by the Worcester family. The patriarch, Morrill Worcester, is president of Worcester Wreaths, a for-profit wreath-making company. His wife, Karen Worcester, is the executive director of the nonprofit Wreaths Across America.
Every wreath used by Wreaths Across America is purchased with donated money from the for-profit company that started it, Worcester Wreath.
The relationship between the company and nonprofit isnt hidden. Its easy to find on both the Worcester Wreath site and the Wreaths Across America site. But this relationship should raise the eyebrows of anyone donating to this charity. When donations to a nonprofit are used to purchase goods from the for-profit company that founded it, it raises the potential for problems. Is the nonprofit overpaying for its wreaths? Is the for-profit enriching itself at the expense of donors?
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Feb 20, 2018
The term conflict of interest has been seen and heard quite often in the political news arena over the last year or so. President Trumps potential conflicts of interest, in particular, have been hotly debated given the substantial personal business interests of the Trump family and many of the Presidents past and present White House advisers and cabinet members.
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How outrageous can some of the conflicts of interest within a charity really be? You can judge for yourself from the three real life examples below.
(1) The Sekulow Family: Turning Law & Justice Charities into Personal Millions
The American Center for Law and Justice or ACLJ may be a familiar name to some donors, but there are actually two different charities that use that name to raise funds American Center for Law and Justice and Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism. The charities each file their own Form 990 with the IRS and issue separate audited financial statements, but as the name confusion suggests, the charities otherwise are interconnected in a number of ways. In particular, one family is at the heart of those connections, and in what appears to be an outrageous example of conflicts of interest, that family and its businesses have used the ACLJ charities to reap millions in personal benefits.
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(2) Up to No Good at Goodwill Omaha: Related Party Contract Conflicts Abound
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(3) Naughty or Nice?: Wreaths Across America Funds Its Related Wreath Company
Each holiday season the charity Wreaths Across America (WAA) coordinates the placement of wreaths on the cemetery headstones of veterans. The annual wreath-laying tradition started in 1992, long before WAA was founded, when Morrill Worcester, owner of Worcester Wreath Company of Harrington, Maine, arranged for his companys 5,000 wreath-surplus at seasons end to be placed in one of the older, less visited sections of Arlington National Cemetery. About 15 years later, the Worcesters, along with veterans and others who had helped with their annual wreath-laying tradition at Arlington, formed WAA in 2007 to continue and expand this effort, and support other groups around the country who wanted to do the same.
Karen Worcester, the wife of Worcester Wreaths Morrill Worcester, has been the executive director of WAA since the start. One of Morrill and Karens daughters, two of their daughters-in-law, as well as a former senior Worcester Wreath employee and his then-wife, also joined the initial WAA board of directors, according to a December 2015 article in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). The year after WAA was formed, tens of thousands of volunteers helped place over 100,000 wreaths on the graves of veterans at over 300 locations, and the number of wreath placements has been growing ever since. In 2017, more than 1,565,000 wreaths were placed at 1,422 locations, including Arlington National Cemetery where all 244,700 markers received a wreath.
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Blues Heron
(5,931 posts)That's a super creepy thing they do. My cousin is buried there and the thought of right wingers using his grave for some wacked out christo-fascist BS has always been annoying.
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,393 posts)UPDATE: The president now says he reversed the cancellation of the annual holiday wreath event https://arlnow.com/2020/11/16/pandemic-cancels-holiday-wreaths-at-arlington-national-cemetery/
Link to tweet
ARLnow.com November 16, 2020 at 10:10pm
Update at 2:20 p.m. Secretary of the Army Ryan D. McCarthy has directed Arlington National Cemetery to host the Wreaths Across America event this year, despite the worsening pandemic, per a tweet Tuesday afternoon. McCarthy said the event will be held safely, but it was not immediately clear how.
I have directed Arlington National Cemetery to safely host Wreaths Across America. We appreciate the families and visitors who take time to honor and remember those who are laid to rest at our nations most hallowed ground.
Link to tweet
Update at 3:50 p.m. President Trump now says that he reversed the decision to cancel the annual holiday wreath event this year.
Link to tweet
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