ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - Hundreds helped put them out before Christmas, now volunteers are needed to pick up the 28,000 wreaths and other holiday memorials placed at headstones at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery.
This year's New Year Good Turn Event will be held the morning of January 25. Christy Borjas co-founded the event 11-years ago. She tells KMOX, up to 900 volunteers, most of them from the Boy Scouts of America and Girl Scouts of the USA, help out every year. "We are getting a lot of groups from different schools coming in," she says, "Honor Society clubs that need volunteer time. It's such a worthwhile project."
Borjas says in many cases the volunteers can pick where they want to help. "A lot of kids come and they want to work in the area where their grandparents are buried or someone they know. We do our best to make sure everybody gets to go to the area they want to."
Borjas says they accomplish what used to take the Jefferson Barracks staff seven weeks to do, in under two hours.
The event will be held rain, shine or snow, but not ice. She says they will postpone until the following Saturday if the wreaths and other items are frozen to the ground. They will also sell patches for the scouts.
Registration is at 9 a.m. that morning. The pick-up begins at 10 a.m.