Maine Wreaths Put at Headstones in Arlington National Cemetery

December 14th, 2006 in Fall 2006 Newswire, Jill Connor, Lauren Smith, Maine

Wreaths
Bangor Daily News
Lauren Smith
Boston University Washington News Service
Dec. 14, 2006

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14–“Doesn’t it make you proud just to be from Maine,” Diane Peva asked a total stranger as she wiped away tears from under her glasses. Realizing they were both wearing sweatshirts embroidered with the state name, the two embraced.

It was just after 8 a.m. Thursday and a thick fog enveloped the hills in the southern part of Arlington National Cemetery, where more than a hundred people gathered at the tail end of a truck carrying 5,000 wreaths.

“Oh, smell them!” Peva said, as the truck back door was pulled up and hundreds of boxes of wreaths were emptied.

Two assembly lines were formed to unload the truck, and within two hours almost every wreath was resting at a headstone in the memorial section of the cemetery.

“Certainly we know why we’re here,” said Wayne Harrington, of the Maine State Society, a Washington-area group of displaced Mainers which helps organize the event each year, before the wreaths were passed out.

“As you place the wreath, this is a time to remember,” Harrington said. “Take time to look at the name. Most of these people don’t have visitors any longer.”

Peva and her husband, Jim, of Surry, each took a wreath and ventured into the rows of white headstones. Down on one knee, Peva leaned the wreath up against the headstone. She straightened the red velvet bow and ran the palm of her hand over the engraved name, pausing slightly. She wiped the top of the headstone and stood up.

“Take a moment, turn around, and just look at what you’re doing,” said a volunteer upon learning it was Peva’s first time helping lay the wreaths.

The two did, and what they saw were rolling hills of white gravestones, all adorned with green wreaths out of the generosity of one man.

For the past 15 Decembers, Morrill Worcester, owner of Worcester Wreath Co. in Harrington, has donated wreaths to be laid at headstones in the cemetery. This year, in addition to the ones donated to Arlington, a half-dozen wreaths were laid in each of 230 veterans cemeteries and monuments spread out over all 50 states.

When the project first began there were barely 10 volunteers, said Lewis Pearson of the Maine State Society. Each year more people began to help. Last year approximately 100 volunteers turned out but this year by the time the wreaths were being put out more than 500 people from across the nation came to lend a hand.

Each year the wreaths are laid in a different section of the cemetery. This year the wreaths were set 150 yards from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, upon headstones in the memorial section, which honor those whose bodies were never recovered.

The annual Arlington Cemetery Wreath Project blossomed into Wreaths Across America when a photo of Worcester’s wreaths resting against gravestones on a snowy day was mass emailed around the world.

Since then, Worcester has received more than 7,000 emails, and media outlets from as far away as Australia, Germany and Japan were present for this year’s event.

“It’s gone worldwide,” Pearson said. “It’s unbelievable.”

This year was also the first year that the truck delivering the wreaths was joined by the Patriot Guard Riders, a group of motorcyclists who honor fallen soldiers.

Bunny O’Leary and John O’Leary, of Norway, and Joe Pepin, of Mt. Chase, were the only three riders who followed the truck the entire 750 miles from Harrington to Arlington.

They were cheered the entire way down, said Bunny O’Leary, and people waved flags and clapped for the truck, on whose side sprawled a photo of wreaths and the words “Remember- Honor- & Teach.”

“The riders were with me all the way,” said Bill Stembergh, of Jonesboro, who drove the truck. “We picked up more and more every state we passed through.”

Stembergh usually makes the drive in one day, he said, but this year they took Route 1 instead of Interstate 95 in order for hundreds of motorcyclists to join, lengthening the trip to four days.

The O’Leary’s and Pepin were originally planning on following the truck to Rhode Island, but each time they made a pit stop, they decided to go a little farther.

“I told Morrill, ‘I just can’t go home yet,’ and Morrill said, ‘You may never go home now,’” said John. O’Leary. “We just couldn’t leave him.”

“There were a lot of wet eyes,” said his wife. “It’s been hard for tough bikers.”

This was also the first year the Civil Air Patrol participated, coordinating the wreath laying in all 50 states.

“Seeing veterans and meeting them was really an honor,” said Patrick Lappin, of Calais, an airman first class in the cadet program of the Civil Air Patrol. “I will pass this story on to my children.”

This was Lappin’s second time participating in the wreath laying ceremony. The event is personal for him, he said, because he lost two relatives in World War II, one at Pearl Harbor and the other at Normandy.

By the time wreaths were being laid at Sen. Edmund Muskie’s gravestone, the USS Battleship Maine monument, the Kennedy family memorials and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the sun had scorched off the fog to an unusually warm December day.

Morrill Worcester, the man whose love of Arlington National Cemetery began when he won a trip to Washington as a 12-year-old paperboy for the Bangor Daily News, looked out at the endless rows of gravestones, hundreds of volunteers and thousands of wreaths.
“They came here because they wanted to be here,” he said. “It just shows the importance of what we’re doing.”

He added: “You and I wouldn’t have what we have today without these buried here. Every one of these people is why we are here.”

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New Hampshire Native Is Outstanding Fellow

November 14th, 2006 in Fall 2006 Newswire, Jill Connor, Kendra Gilbert, New Hampshire

Eggers
New Hampshire Union Leader
Kendra Gilbert
Boston University Washington News Service
11-14-06

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 – There isn’t much New Hampshire native Jeffrey Eggers can’t accomplish once he sets his mind to it. Degree in aerospace engineering from the United States Naval Academy? Check. Masters degree in mathematics and philosophy from Oxford? Check. Lieutenant Commander in the Navy with a tour of duty in Iraq? Check. One of only 14 selected nationally to a prestigious White House Fellowship? Check.

Sewing machine repair expert? Maybe not.

Eggers’ mother, Barbara, still laughs about the time her mechanically curious three-year-old son dismantled her sewing machine.

“He wanted to see how things work,” Barbara Eggers said, recalling the incident.

“She doesn’t let that one go,” Jeff, now 35 and just as curious, said. “She still accuses me of being the reason that her sewing machine never worked right.”

Although his curiosity may have killed, or at least injured, the sewing machine, Eggers’ parents, who live in Chichester, agree that it’s their son’s inquisitive nature, not drive, which has taken him so far in life; all the way to the White House, in fact.

“Driven is not a word I would use to describe Jeff,” Barbara Eggers said. “He’s very curious, involved in different things and wants to learn more.”

When asked if he agrees with his mother’s description, Eggers replied, “I think that’s a very astute observation. Coming from my mom, she’s going to be the one most qualified to make such a careful observation.”

Eggers’ father Jim, a retired Air Force officer, noted that “there’s not much mechanical that Jeff won’t tackle or try to understand. He will take things apart just to see how they work.”

The parents and son have a mutual respect for each other.

Eggers said his father, as a military officer, “made a deliberate attempt, somewhat to the sacrifice of his career, to put his family first.” Eggers’ younger sister Jennifer, 33, is a doctor who now lives with her husband, Ashish Chaudhari, and son, Cole, 2 1/2-years-old in Concord.

“That afforded us the ability to stay in New Hampshire for grades Kthrough12 and gave both my sister and I a lot of stability, which is unusual for military kids,” Eggers said.

Eggers was a “very good student,” in elementary and middle school in Durham and later in high school at Phillips Exeter Academy, according to his mother, who is on a one-year sabbatical from the elite prep school after several years of being dean of the faculty there.

“I was aware that he did well in school and was pretty smart,” said Eggers’ sister, Jennifer. “I tried to copy that to some level, but he was much smarter in math and building airplanes and wind tunnels and I wasn’t really interested in that. I was more interested in biology. We had different interests, but he was someone that I thought I should be like in terms of being smart and working hard.”

Added Jeffrey Eggers: “We were raised in a household that really respected and put a lot of attention on grades and academic pursuits. My father really planted and fostered and grew an intellectual and academic curiosity in both my sister and I.”

With “above-average” schooling, which Eggers said was made possible by his mother’s teaching jobs, Eggers was accepted into several prestigious colleges, both military and civilian.

Although he had already accepted admission to Stanford, Eggers had a change of heart after what he said was an “epiphany” that finally connected his desire to become a naval officer with going to a naval college.

“He went right down to the wire in making that decision,” Barbara said.

Eggers said he had to call Stanford and say, ‘I was kidding. I’m going to the Naval Academy.’ ”

As a laid-back kid with long hair, Eggers found the initial transition into the Naval Academy difficult.

“All of a sudden I shaved my head and was getting barked at and marching around,” he said.

After the initial shock wore off, Eggers found normalcy in athletics and other extra-curricular activities. He played ice hockey throughout his four years at the academy, something that had been a part of his life as far back as he could remember.

“Our whole family was on the ice rink from an early age,” Eggers said. “My father was an ice hockey referee. My mother was a figure skating coach. My sister was a figure skater. And I was an ice hockey kid. We had a pond next to our house that would freeze over in the winter. On weekends, it wasn’t uncommon that all four of us would end up with ice skates on our feet at some point.”

Dave Ismay, who met Eggers while they were both in their second year at the Naval Academy, said Eggers was a “natural athlete.”

Going away to Annapolis deprived Eggers of the stability with which he grew up. After graduating with a degree in aerospace engineering, he went to England for two years on a Navy scholarship to study mathematics and philosophy at Oxford.

It was another abrupt transition, but also a “rich and rewarding experience that was a contrast from the experience of the Naval Academy, which even in the classroom is very rigid,” Eggers said.

Then, “literally the day after I finished my last exam at Oxford, I flew to San Diego and reported for my first training command there,” Eggers said.

His sister traveled from New Hampshire to San Diego to see her brother.

“If we have the opportunity to be close, there wasn’t a question about whether or not we’d be there,” Jennifer said. “I was definitely excited to be there and see him.”

From there, Eggers’ military career would take him around the world, to places like Southeast Asia and Hawaii, where he was able to put his mechanical skills to good use doing research and development on a mini-submarine for the Navy’s special operations community.

Eggers remained in close touch with his family in New Hampshire. Packages and letters from home started arriving while he was at the Naval Academy and “continue to this day,” Eggers said.

In April of last year, Eggers was deployed to Iraq as commander of the Naval Special Warfare Task Unit assigned to train Iraqi soldiers and police officers in the Anbar province.

“It was a mother’s worst fear,” Barbara said, of her son’s deployment to Iraq. Eggers often talked with his parents about friends killed in the Navy.

Although Eggers knew the task of training entire police and army units would take years, he said that in his seven months in Iraq he witnessed “small tactical victories.”

“We were able to watch certain Iraqi units that we’d spent the whole time with go from being unable to organize to be organized, trained, equipped and led to conduct their own independent operations,” Eggers said. “That was very fulfilling.”

And the packages from home continued. “I would drink a lot of coffee over there to stay awake,” Eggers said. “And most of it was supplied fresh by my parents.”

His parents welcomed him home in October, 2005, flying out to San Diego to see him.

Although Eggers admits that he never really thought of a career in the Navy when he first reported for training after completing his Masters degree from Oxford, he now recognizes how much the Navy has given him.

“It’s been a continual string of very rewarding and exciting opportunities,” he said.

The latest of which is his fellowship at the White House.

“I’m still working in the government, but it’s a very different kind of work – wearing a suit everyday instead of a uniform,” said Eggers, who is assigned to the National Security Council. “It’s a very unique opportunity that not a lot of people get to enjoy.”

Now, he said, he looks forward to those “rare opportunities I have to wear my uniform and stay in touch with my Navy community.”

Throughout the application process, Eggers looked to family and friends for advice.

None of his close friends or family was surprised by Eggers’ decision to apply. And the only person who was surprised when he was selected was Eggers himself.

“I don’t think it felt like it was actually happening until I got here,” Eggers said.

Eggers talked with Ismay throughout the process, sharing some of the other applicants’ impressive bios with him. But in Ismay’s mind “it was a no-brainer. Jeff was by far the most attractive candidate,” he said, noting that his best friend is “freakishly high achieving.”

As with past challenges, Eggers faces the duties of his fellowship and his placement with the National Security Council, where he serves as director for weapons of mass destruction terrorism, maritime security, hostages and special operations in the Directorate for Combating Terrorism, head on.

In that position, he helps Stephen Hadley, the national security advisor, and shapes U.S. policy by working with federal departments and agencies to check for consistency with other existing programs and initiatives and to ensure that resources are properly deployed to achieve national strategies.

Eggers said he enjoys the fellowships’ “well-rounded approach to leadership” that has allowed him and the 13 other fellows to meet with senior officials in all branches of the government.

While he was appointed by President Bush, Eggers has yet to actually meet his commander in chief. He and the other fellows will get their chance in December when they sit down with the president.

And while they are excited for their son, Barbara and Jim Eggers, who now call Chichester home, have other reasons to love his appointment to the White House Fellowship.

“This is the first time the family’s been in the same time zone in 13 years,” Barbara said. “So he’s going to come home for Thanksgiving.”

It is a trip Eggers also is looking forward to.

“There’s something very pleasant and enjoyable about New Hampshire in the fall,” he said. “So the holidays are particularly nice to go home to. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a white Christmas.”

But for right now, Eggers is looking forward to a Thanksgiving with his family and his mom’s home cooking.

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DAR Takes on Myths of Early America

November 2nd, 2006 in Fall 2006 Newswire, Jill Connor, Katherine Geyer, Washington, DC

MYTHS
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Katie Geyer
Boston University News Service
November 2, 2006

WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 -- The tall wooden timepiece built in Oakham, Mass., and now on display at the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum here can be called a tall clock or a case clock. But never call it a grandfather clock.

The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), with a mission of promoting historic education and preservation, is out to set the record straight. Tall clocks were not called grandfather clocks until the 1870s, when the song “My Grandfather’s Clock” became popular. So tall clocks like this one, made by William Crawford between 1790 and 1820, must not be labeled “grandfather.”

The clock myth is part of the DAR's exhibit, “Myth or Truth? Stories We've Heard about Early America,” which began on Oct. 6 and will run until next March 31 at the museum. The grandfather clock myth is one of many that the museum director, Diane Dunkley, says have been driving the DAR and other American history buffs crazy.

"They're the sorts of things that historians know but the general public doesn’t know," she said. "There’s a lot of discussion [at the DAR] all the time about ‘did you hear this one?’ ”

And so was born an exhibit that challenges silverware, flag makers, door hinges, Yankee Doodle and the number 13.

Ms. Dunkley said the myths come in several different forms.

"There are myths that start out with a kernel of truth and then just sort of get embellished for whatever reason," she said. "It's like playing a game of whispers."

"And then there are things that people just make up to explain things," Ms. Dunkley said.

Patrick Sheary, the DAR Museum’s curator of furnishings, is a native of Worcester and regularly maintains furniture in the museum’s various state rooms, including the Massachusetts room. The room is a replica of the front parlor of the Hancock-Clarke House in Lexington, Mass., where John Hancock and Samuel Adams were said to have been when they heard Paul Revere’s message in 1775 that the British were coming.

Mr. Sheary, who has worked there for 11 years, said that the most famous item in the room is a Chinese tea chest said to have been one of the two surviving tea chests thrown into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party in 1773.

“It conjures up lots of debate,” Mr. Sheary said, because without the presence of water marks, he said, the DAR questions whether the box had any involvement with the Boston Tea Party.

One myth featured in the DAR’s exhibit is the common assumption that people were shorter, on average, during the revolutionary period, than they are today. The DAR says scholars have compared the average height of Revolutionary soldiers with the height of soldiers in the 20th century, and the difference is within fractions of an inch.

Similarly, at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Mass., curator Tom Kelleher frequently explains to visitors that the village’s low-ceilinged revolutionary period houses are not necessarily evidence that people were shorter back then.

When people make assumptions about the low ceilings, he said, he asks them, “Well, are you hitting your head?” Although the ceilings seem low, “you don’t have to duck,” he said.

Mr. Kelleher said that Americans have come to expect a certain amount of space in a house and that high ceilings would have been seen as a waste of material and of heat back then.

The curator echoed the DAR’s warning about historical myths.

“Good stories stick in our minds,” he said. When people hear of evidence that Americans have changed, he said, they think it is very interesting. But as interesting as these stories sound, Mr. Kelleher said, it is best to have a healthy skepticism.

He said questioning history teaches critical thinking. “Not just about history, but about life in general,” he said.

But Kenneth J. Moynihan, a professor of history at Assumption College, said that myths about height and artifacts and the like may catch the public’s eye, but they are not the kind that really have power. “We have myths about everything,” he said. “Some of them are important and some of them are not.”

For example, he said, there is a powerful myth that surrounds the founding of our nation. “A major factor in our self identity is that either we bought the land fair and square or the Indians had it coming because they [attacked] the white people,” he said. “That’s the level of myth that really has power, not necessarily myths about how tall people were.”

The professor said he is working on a book about Worcester’s early history in which he plans to challenge some of the assumptions about the town’s past.

Ms. Dunkley of the DAR said the public as well as historians should always question the sources of their information.

"What we really want the public to do is say, 'OK, that’s an interesting story.' Then go see what they can find out."

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Former Page Recalls Her Experience; Praises Program

November 2nd, 2006 in Fall 2006 Newswire, Jill Connor, Kendra Gilbert, New Hampshire

NHPage
New Hampshire Union Leader
Kendra Gilbert
Boston University Washington News Service
11-2-06

WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 – For one summer month between her junior and senior years at Trinity High School in Manchester, Kaitlyn Funk was a congressional page.

Now a sophomore at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., studying philosophy, she has nothing but good things to say about the previously low-profile program, which has now become synonymous with sex and scandal.

“It was a phenomenal opportunity to work on the floor and help representatives,” said Funk, whose father encouraged her to apply.

The page program allows high school students to come to Washington for a semester or one of two summer sessions and assist members of Congress by running messages and answering phones, among other things. Each page is sponsored by a representative or senator.

Funk was sponsored by New Hampshire Republican Rep. Jeb Bradley.

“We think the page program is extraordinary, as it allows students to learn about the legislative process firsthand,” said Salley Collins, press secretary for the Committee on House Administration.

Funk, now 19, agrees, often using the word “cool” to describe her experiences on Capitol Hill.

As a page, Funk witnessed the House vote on the controversial Defense of Marriage Act.

“It was cool,” she said about being on the floor for the vote. “My parents were watching it on TV and I was there. I got to see it happen.”

Not only does the program give high school students a close-up view of Congress, but it also allows them to explore a new city and meet new people.

The program gave Funk a freedom not usually experienced by a 16-year-old, and when she moved back home that August, she joked, she was “hard to live with.”

“It was an adjustment coming home,” she said. “I had tasted independence.”

Going into her senior year at Trinity, Funk said she felt more prepared because of her experience in Washington.

Funk’s U.S. history teacher Marigrace O’Gorski said that Funk was a “very enthusiastic student who was always participating.”

While in Washington, Funk bonded with other pages and counts many of them, including her current college roommate, as her friends today.

“When we were out of work, we could go anywhere in the city,” Funk said. “We had the Metro, we had money and we had each other.”

According to Collins, the pages are under constant supervision while they are in the dorm where they live and while they are at work. If they going out they are required to use the buddy system and they have to sign in and out of the dorm.

Funk said she believes the bond among pages is so strong because other high schoolers cannot relate to the experience.

“It’s an experience that no one else can understand,” Funk said. People would ask her where she was all summer, and she would tell them she was working on the floor of Congress and they wouldn’t understand how momentous that was, she said.

Funk has strong opinions on the Mark Foley scandal, which involved a House member having inappropriate email conversations with former pages, but she insisted that the program was safe and that she never heard anything about inappropriate e-mails or instant messages while she was a page.

“There was never any talk and nothing ever happened that would lead me to believe that there were inappropriate relationships going on,” Funk said.

While pages frequently run messages between members and their offices, Funk said, they never really have much interaction with the members themselves, except on the floor.

However, after the scandal broke, she said, two of her male friends who were also former pages told her they had received e-mails from Foley.

Despite the recent scandal and the whirlwind of rumors about getting rid of the program, Funk can’t say enough good things about it.

“I always talk it up,” she said. “Even if you’re really not that interested in politics, I think that as a citizen of the United States, it’s a great opportunity.”

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