Volunteers, once again, carried out the painstaking task of locating more than 8,000 graves of American servicemen and women to place American flags on them in honor of Memorial Day at Woodlawn Cemetery.

 

Volunteers fanned out across the sprawling cemetery, located at 4199 Webster Avenue at East 233rd Street, and placed small flags at the headstones or in front of community mausoleums as a gesture of respect and tradition for the country’s fallen military members.

 

This year’s “flagging” season began on Saturday, May 21, and continued through Sunday, May 29. On Sunday, May 22, volunteers, including a local cub scout troop, were greeted by James Hendon, commissioner of NYC Department of Veterans’ Services, and Zach Iscol, commissioner of NYC Department of Emergency Management, before they got to work flagging the gravesites.

 

On Saturday, May 28, Susan Olsen of Woodlawn Conservancy told Norwood News, “When people are buried, we record if they’re a veteran or not. With COVID, our volunteers have not had the access to the materials they used to have, but we’ve added the people that were buried this last year, so every year it keeps growing.”

 

Olsen estimates that another 100 veterans were buried at Woodlawn over the past 12 months, bringing the total number of veterans buried at Woodlawn to about 8,600.

 

According to Olsen, this year, Woodlawn had about 150 volunteers throughout the flagging season, including members of Community Board 7 (CB7), Cub Scout Pack 520 from Morningside Heights, and Pack 777, both from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Volunteers spread out across the 400-acre cemetery and flagged as many graves as possible.

 

Famous soldiers buried at Woodlawn include Civil War veteran and newspaper publisher, Joseph Pulitzer, as well as Sergeant Natale Greco, a Bronx native whose B-24 was shot down over Germany during World War II.

 

In general, the cemetery currently has around 310,000 individual grave sites and nearly 1,300 private mausoleums. Woodlawn was designated a national historic landmark in 2011.

 

Norwood resident, Bruce Campbell, was joined by two of his neighbors, Brant Alper and his daughter Trina, when he volunteered for flagging season. They were working inside an office, putting stickers with the names of veterans on hundreds of American flags that were then placed in boxes and picked up by more volunteers who later placed them on the graves and mausoleums.

 

“We are preparing flags for those veterans who are in the community mausoleums,” Campbell said. “These are folks who don’t have individual graves or individual markers, but we have 13 or 14 community mausoleums that are spread out all over the cemetery. Think of them as apartment houses for the dead, for people who don’t want to be buried in the ground, but don’t want to spend millions of dollars for a private family mausoleum.”

 

Campbell continued, “For example, Robert Moses is in one of our community mausoleums, and because we don’t have a plot, with a stone for us to put the flag in the ground in front of, we put their names on the individual flags, and then put them in front of the community mausoleum.”

The Norwood native said he grew up as a “Navy brat” with both parents serving in the military, but that was not the reason behind his volunteering. “I think it’s an important thing to do, and I’ve been involved with the cemetery for quite a while,” he said, adding that he even gives guided tours.

 

Asked about his assistants, Campbell replied, “Brant started flagging about five or so years ago and was so taken by it that he comes back every year, and this year, he brought his lovely daughter.”

 

For additional information on events and tours at Woodlawn Cemetery, visit www.woodlawn.org.