Dear Compatriots,

This year IASSAR received a “Partners in Patriotism” Award at the NSSAR Congress. The Award was given for IASSAR participation in the “Wreaths Across America” program in 2007. Actually only two of us participated, Mike Rowley and myself and our roll was minimal. The Jean Marie Cardinal Chapter of DAR were the ones who did the work. See photos from 2007 on our website. This is a national movement to decorate veterans graves across America with fresh evergreen wreaths just before Christmas. There are 286 locations, including 4 in Iowa (but not including the first time effort in Des Moines by DAR last year) where veterans graves were decorated last year. There were 32,553 wreaths placed on veterans graves

This year the ceremony will be on Saturday Dec. 13 at 12:00 PM EST
–11:00 AM, Iowa time

My strong belief and recommendation to the BOM is to join this movement. To begin, I urge each of you to open the website: Wreaths Across America.Org and read what is happening. There is a veterans cemetery in Woodland and Glendale cemeteries in Des Moines and probably more I do not know about.

Francis Keith