The Memorial Day Flowers Foundation hosted its annual tradition of placing roses on grave sites in memory of the fallen. Floral and logistics companies came together for this important holiday to donate services as well as flowers, coordinating several Memorial Day Flower events around the U.S. This year, over 41 national cemeteries across the country received roses thanks to Memorial Day Flowers.
Hundreds of thousands of roses were donated by many wholesale flower companies in the U.S. and South America including Jet Fresh Flower Distributors and Jet Fresh Flower Growers, S.A. in Cotopaxi, Ecuador.
Ryan Black, marketing director of Jet Fresh Flower Distributors, returned to Arlington, VA. as a continuous member of the Memorial Day Flowers’ advisory board filming highlights from the emotional two-day event.
DVFlora
For the Memorial Day event at the Salem County Veterans Cemetery, DVFlora's Mike Mitchell worked directly with Rosaprima who provided 3,000 stems for the event. Carolee Tees offered use of the flower processing belt, which saved a ton of time (and clean-up) onsite. She and Donna Niedbalski had a team of volunteers to process the stems including Al Grillo, Amy Haig, Robin Grossmick, and Keith Rogers.
Dave Paleschic loaded the product and delivered it to the cemetery in one of the company's wrapped vans. Though they weren’t scheduled to begin laying roses until 9:30 am, faithful volunteers began to arrive as early as 8:45 am. Rose Tamaricho came out of retirement to partner with Steve Natalino again this year. Accompanied by their families, Steve Catando, Kristin McDonnell, Michelle Geisert and Karen Urbanek also returned for their second year of service.