FAYETTEVILLE -- A weekend of Memorial Day events is planned at the Fayetteville National Cemetery.
Families, friends and area Boy Scouts will begin adorning graves with flowers and American flags at 9 a.m. Saturday, according to a news release.
Hike 4 Heroes is a first-time event that will follow at 10 a.m. Saturday. Participants will hike about 2 miles from the cemetery, 700 Government Ave., to the Fayetteville Veterans Home, 1125 College Ave., and back. Registration is $35 and includes a hamburger lunch and T-shirt. The fee will be waived in part for hikers who donate items, such as socks, underwear, books, reading glasses, puzzle books, art supplies and toiletries, to patients at the veterans home or Veterans Health Care System of the Ozarks.
All proceeds will go toward a renovation fund for the national cemetery. For more information, go to bosblessings.org or contact Jannie D. Bibb at 479-530-7728 or jannie.d.bibb@bosblessings.org.
Volunteers will start reading the names of those buried in the cemetery at 1 p.m. Sunday. The reading is expected to extend through the night for 19.5 hours. Readers will work 15-minute shifts.
The cemetery's formal Memorial Day program is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Monday. Brig. Gen. H.D. McCarty, a veteran of the Air Force Reserve and former senior pastor at University Baptist Church in Fayetteville, will serve as master of ceremony. The guest speaker is John Nicholson, former undersecretary for memorial affairs at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. A special recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War is planned.
The national cemetery is the final resting place for approximately 9,000 veterans and their spouses.
Veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried in the roughly 15-acre cemetery.
The federal government purchased the original 5 acres of the cemetery in 1867 to inter the remains of Union soldiers who died in the battles of Pea Ridge, Prairie Grove and Fayetteville.
NW News on 05/21/2015