A different Memorial Day weekend remembrance

Due to virus risk, Veterans Affairs Department bars groups from placing flags at its cemeteries.

On the Saturday of a normal Memorial Day weekend, local Boy Scouts would place small American flags alongside the 19,000plus gravestones at the Marietta National Cemetery. Mourners would file onto the grounds — one car after another — to pay respects to loved ones, former comrades or heroes they never met.

But this Saturday, the Scouts stayed home. A few mourners were scattered about the grounds placing flowers or small flags beside the white marble headstones, but there were no lines waiting to enter. And the rolling green hills of this ancient cemetery were missing the gentle sway of thousands of tiny flags for the first time in more than a century, the cemetery’s volunteer historian said.

Such is life in a country still gripped by pandemic.

“I’m lost,” said Brad Quinlin, a volunteer historian at the cemetery for 32 years. Quinlan said on a typical Memorial Day weekend, he’d give a half-dozen tours to small groups. But to help prevent potential spread of COVID-19, Quinlin was forced to halt his tours.

The grounds of the cemetery are open, but to limit the potential for crowds, the annual Memorial Day ceremony will be replaced by a private wreath laying not open to the public.

Beaches along the Florida and Georgia coasts were hopping Saturday, as were state parks and lakes. In Milton and Tucker, the cities opened pools with new social distancing rules.

Campfires and grills blazed from Toccoa to Thomasville as Georgians sick of cabin fever explored the outdoors.

Along Washington Avenue in Marietta, Daniel Creager and his wife, Inge, planted more than a dozen American flags outside their condo building overlooking the cemetery. Residents of the building and business owners on the ground floor pitched in to buy the flags a few years ago.

Creager, who said a cousin was killed in service in Vietnam, said the condo residents raise the flags for all patriotic holidays.

This year will be difficult, he said. The couple normally gather with their grandchildren to celebrate the holiday weekend.

“We have to see our grandchildren virtually rather than physically, and when we have seen them on a couple of occasions physically, we have to keep our distance,” Creager said. “They’ve learned about air hugs.

“We’ll see them. On the computer screen. But we’ll make it,” he said.

‘We’ll put out our flag’

Andersonville National Historic Site on Monday will stream online the sounding of taps at its cemetery. The national cemetery in Canton also will hold a private wreath-laying ceremony and a moment of silence.

The Veterans Affairs Department is barring groups from placing flags at its cemeteries, a yearslong Memorial Day tradition for Boy Scouts at the VA’s cemetery in Marietta.

A spokesman for the VA’s National Cemetery Administration said people are welcome to visit the agency’s cemeteries Memorial Day weekend and “place individual flags on graves to honor friends and family. We ask that all visitors adhere to CDC, state and local health, safety, and travel guidelines.”

On the grounds of the Marietta cemetery, Quinlin said he came Saturday to place flags and take pictures at gravesites of fallen service members whose families he’s gotten to know over the years.

He also placed a flag at the grave of Emma Stephenson, a former slave who became a nurse who cared for Union soldiers during the Civil War. She died in Marietta in 1864 of disease, Quinlin said.

“I’ve been involved in the flag placements and the Memorial Day events here for more than 27 years,” he said. “This is the first time no flags. This is the first time since 1869 that there’s not a flag on every grave.”

Quinlin said he’d drive to Andersonville today to place a flag at the grave of his father, a combat veteran of World War II.

Kate Walters and her husband, George, came to the Marietta cemetery on Saturday out of a sense of patriotism.

The Walterses have attended several Memorial Day ceremonies at the cemetery before, but not this year.

“We’ll put out our flag,” she said. Her husband said they’ll hold their own remembrances of fallen relatives and friends.

“I remember them,” George Walters said. “Just because we don’t have (the ceremonies) doesn’t mean we don’t remember them.”

J. SCOTT TRUBEY / STRUBEY@AJC.COM Along Washington Avenue in Marietta, Daniel Creager and his wife put more than a dozen U.S. flags Saturday outside their condo building overlooking Marietta National Cemetery. He said a cousin was killed in service in Vietnam.

JENNI GIRTMAN / FOR THE AJC Marietta National Cemetery historian Brad Quinlin placed this flag at the grave of Emma Stephenson, a former Tennessee slave who became a nurse who cared for Union soldiers in the Civil War. She died in Marietta in 1864 of disease, he said.