Boy Scouts from Culver City Troop 113 joined nearly 4,000 other Scouts from across the county to honor the nation’s war dead by planting flags on their graves in a ceremony last Saturday at Los Angeles National Cemetery in West Los Angeles.
As other Scouts have done for the past 40 years, the boys fanned out across the 114-acre cemetery to place the small flags in front of each headstone, took a step back, and then saluted.
All of the 88,000 graves were decorated in less than an hour, the tiny banners waving slightly in a light breeze under a sunny sky.
“Most boys who are this age would be content watching Saturday morning cartoons, playing video games, or just ‘sleeping in,’” said Richard Marcus, the former Culver City mayor and current Boy Scout official who has chaired the Memorial Day Weekend event for the past several years.
“But these young men instead chose to honor our veterans, and our entire nation, by taking part in this event,” Marcus said. “They’re proud and thankful to our vets and our country, and their parents and our nation can be proud of them.”
Troop 113 Eagle Scout Drake Myers had the honor of joining Marcus on the podium to instruct the crowd how to properly conduct the somber but uplifting flag-planting procedure.
The Los Angeles National Cemetery, often referred to as the “VA Cemetery,” was dedicated in 1889 and stands at the corner of Wilshire and Sepulveda boulevards.
It’s the final resting place for military members who died in battle or afterward in conflicts ranging from the Spanish-American War in the late 19th Century through the Korean War in the 1950s, as well as in other hostilities.
It also has a handful of markers for those who fought in the Civil War, eventually moved to Southern California, and passed away after the cemetery was opened.
The facility was closed for new internments in 2002 because it ran out of room, but the Veterans Affairs Department has since acquired another 13 acres where it plans to build a mausoleum-like structure to hold the ashes of war vets and their spouses who are cremated.
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