Local funeral home participates in Wreaths Across America
As president of Townson-Smith Funeral Home in Robbinsville and the third-generation of the Smith family to work in the funeral-service industry, April Smith Gladden has dedicated her professional life to the thoughtful care of the departed.
In 2019, she had an opportunity to participate in an annual event that she had long admired – Wreaths Across America.
Since then – except for one year, interrupted by COVID-19 – Wreaths Across America has become an annual tradition for the Gladden family, including April, her husband Calvin and their 10-year-old daughter Calin.
The wreath-laying is held on the second or third Saturday of each December. This year’s Wreaths Across America event will be Saturday, Dec. 18, at state and federal veterans cemeteries around the world.
As usual, the Gladdens family plan to be at Arlington National Cemetery with a large group of funeral directors, laying wreaths on the veterans’ gravestones.
The annual pilgrimage of funeral directors is sponsored by The Dodge Company, a Billerica, Mass., distributer that is the world’s largest supplier of embalming chemicals, instruments, urns and other supplies.Members of the group arrive a day or two early for sightseeing, then converge on Arlington National Cemetery for an 8 a.m. Saturday start time, when volunteers gather at the many truckloads of wreaths lined up at the cemetery.
Volunteers with specific gravestones in mind are allowed to separate from the group and decorate those gravestones first before the remaining volunteers are dispatched. The work is usually done by lunchtime.
Not every gravestone receives a wreath. Some gravestones will already be decorated and they are left undisturbed. Also, gravestones for Jews, Muslims and other religions do not receive wreaths, she said.
Sentimental journey
April Gladden and her family made the trip in 2019 and 2021, skipping 2020 because of COVID-19 (the ceremony took place in 2020, but the wreaths were placed by military personnel).
Both her father and father-in-law were military veterans, which gives the wreath ceremony added sentimental value.
The sightseeing takes in the usual Washington, D.C., venues, but with a twist geared for a large group of funeral directors. In 2019, the Gladdens traveled to Dover Air Force Base to tour Dover Port Mortuary, an Air Force facility that handles remains of military casualties returning to the Continental United States. She noted that every service member processed at the facility receives a new, freshly tailored uniform with ribbons.
In 2021, the Gladdens visited Joseph Gawler’s Sons Funeral Home, a funeral home founded in 1850 that has handled final arrangements for presidents, vice presidents, Supreme Court justices, members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, military leaders and foreign dignitaries.