| | Our 2023 Community Partner
While the challenges continue, so do the good works done by our neighbors, our teachers, our health care providers, our volunteers and so many others. This is their story. Ledyard National Bank is proud to support the 2023 Hometown Heroes, who were nominated by members of the community and selected by editors of the Concord Monitor. Nominate your Hometown Hero Today. |
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| | Hometown Hero: Our nation says thanks for beautifying State Vets Cemetery
By RAY DUCKLER Monitor staff
Olivia DeAngelis waited for the sharp-ended pole to puncture the ground, creating a small hole less than an inch in diameter. |
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| She had never met the woman beside her using this strange, spear-like tool and plunging it into the earth, but they were teammates nevertheless. Teammates on an all-volunteer organization that plants flags tight to the left of the headstones during the annual pre-Memorial Day spruce-up at the New Hampshire Veterans Cemetery.
Thursday was one of those days, as the cemetery prepared for Monday’s holiday, when thousands will visit a place of honor that some say is the nicest veterans cemetery they’ve seen in New England.
Volunteers like DeAngelis, a senior at Concord High School, make it happen. She regularly gardens at the cemetery and sometimes plants flags there. She partnered with the Green Beret Foundation to help raise money for Special Forces soldiers and their families. She smashed her stated goal of $500.
That’s why her mother, Bridgett DeAngelis, nominated Olivia for the Monitor’s Hometown Hero status. Her volunteer work was recognized nationally as she was one of 51 individuals chosen to receive the Billy Michal Student Leadership Award for her unselfishness, optimism and sacrifice. She won a trip to New Orleans to visit the National World War II Museum.
She’s part of a solid base of volunteers in the Granite State, said Shawn Buck, director of the Veterans Cemetery in Boscawen. Hundreds show up annually for the flag-planting afternoon, and they continue to help with other services throughout the year.
Spreading wreaths around the cemetery during the holiday season is another all-hands-on-deck event.
“Incredible,” Buck said. “So many wonderful volunteers. Today you’ll see 200 people. We never know how many. Putting in flags is always a good turnout. Maybe there are groups like churches or veterans service organizations, folks in uniform, who plant flags and can interact with the other volunteers. I saw a little girl out here who could not have been older than 4.”
DeAngelis graduates from Concord High next month. She’ll go to college and wants to be a teacher. She’s already setting a good example, in a different sort of classroom.
“It’s peaceful, serene,” DeAngelis said. “I come here to make things look good. I’m hoping to continue this until I physically can’t anymore.”
She comes from a military family. Uncles, a grandfather, cousins, her brother, all served. She says she’s a history buff. She refers to herself as “nerdy.”
She’s studied war topics beyond the battlefield. She learned about the home front.
“Rationing is my big thing,” DeAngelis said. “I have rationing index cards with recipes. I have a cookbook, recipes from World War I and World War II from the home front.”
Meanwhile, this has become a family affair for the DeAngelis household. Gardening, planting, weeding, scrubbing those filthy head stones. They’d plant tulips and get sunburned, together.
She showed up Thursday, ready to plant. A lot of others did, too.
Michael Elliott, of Alton, who did two tours in Vietnam, wore a hat that read, “Ch47 Chinook Vietnam.” Asked if he had seen friends die, Elliott said, softly, “Yes,” before a five-second pause indicated it was time to switch topics.
He’s been planting flags for 20 years and has friends buried at the cemetery. He said he’s been seeing more young people like DeAngelis showing up at the cemetery, which is appreciated. He also said he sees changes in the American psyche. Soldiers have been treated with respect during the War on Terror. Not so with Vietnam veterans.
“After what our service members went through in Afghanistan and Iraq, that made the country more aware, which is good,” Elliott said. “They brought everything to light.”
Debi Langlais, of Hill, sat on a stone bench overlooking rows and rows of headstones. One of them, in the second row, close to the paved trail, was for her husband, a Navy man who died from an illness last year.
She’s been coming annually for 15 years. She wore a loud yellow-green combination top that she called chartreuse. She wore yellow sun glasses, and her unique outfit matched the unique perspective she had gotten by moving back a little, to see a bigger picture.
With her husband lying close, the sense of loss and courage everywhere, and with a quiet chance to reflect, Langlais got hit hard.
“Looking at it from the outside in, it’s overwhelming,” she said. “I was just in awe and I am so emotionally overwhelmed right now, and you don’t realize exactly the impact that this makes when you see all of these people giving up their time, their effort.”
DeAngelis is part of that team, whose members create strong bonds, whether they know a person’s name or not.
Check out the cemetery this Memorial Day holiday and you’ll see rows of headstones that seem to go on forever. You’ll see flags that rise slightly over the three-foot-tall stones, their black lettering and gray color recently scrubbed clean and bright.
Using that golf-putter thing with the pointy side, each flag was inserted at exactly the same depth. The stones and flags are same distance apart throughout the cemetery, creating a uniformity that demands respect.
It’s one of the places DeAngelis and others go. They say it makes them feel better, maybe stronger, by meeting the sadness head on.
“There are a lot of people around here who help,” DeAngelis said. “Look around. It’s great.”
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