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US: Over 120,000 Ecuadorian and Colombian roses used for Memorial Day

For the fourth year running, the US military Arlington National Cemetery was ceremoniously adorned with flowers on Memorial Day in commemoration of those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their fellow Americans and the American way of life. Over 120,000 Ecuadorian and Colombian roses were laid in tribute at the foot of Arlington’s stark white tombstones in this annual ceremony begun by Ramiro Peñaherrera from the Memorial Day Flowers Foundation.



This Memorial Day Flowers ritual garners more volunteers each year, and this year was backed by 28 organizations ranging from Ball, Solé Farms, Golden Flowers, The Queens Flowers, CalFlowers, WF&FSA, CargoMaster, ProEcuador and Asocolflores, just to mention a few. A host of 300 mainly Boy Scout volunteers from the Washington D.C. Chapter took up the reverent task of placing 120,000 roses on individual graves throughout the stately 624-acre cemetery where some 350,000 American soldiers have been laid to rest.



The foundation’s meditative gesture of acknowledging those who have fallen in combat by laying a simple flower on a soldier’s grave turned into a spontaneous social undercurrent to be reckoned with: visitors to the cemetery paying their own respects spontaneously joined in to give of their own time and lay roses on graves of soldiers they had never known, and social networking broke out in an overwhelming response.

As people turn to flowers to honor the memory of their fallen soldiers and strangers step in to take them up and pass them along of their own accord, we indubitably witness just how profoundly flowers are the very best means of appreciation and societal gesturing.

Source: ASOCOLFLORES
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