By NewsLine Staff
mail@floridanewsline.com
Jacksonville Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution will host the Wreaths Across America Mobile Education Exhibit National Tour stop in Jacksonville. The theme for 2021 is: Live Up To Their Legacy
The Mobile Education Exhibit started its tour at the Wreaths Across America headquarters in Maine and will be in Jacksonville on Oct. 31, 2021 from 1 p.m. – 4 p.m. at Super Walmart, 10251 Shops Lane near The Avenues Mall. The scheduled event is both free and open to the public.
The Mobile Education Unit is a unique mini museum, including storyboards, visuals, and interactive computers, that is free to the community and helps honor local veterans. The Mobile Education Unit achieves this goal by bringing the local community, veterans, active-duty military, and their families together through interactive exhibits, short films, and shared stories. The exhibit serves as a mobile museum, educating visitors about the service and sacrifice of our nation’s heroes as well as to serve as an official “welcome home” station for our nation’s Vietnam Veterans. The objectives are strong: Remember, Honor, Teach. This includes instilling patriotism into the children as they learn of the past.
Activities include an outside wreath demonstration, which illustrates 10 special qualities of a wreath; children will be given coloring pages. A tour of the unit will be available with social distancing and COVID procedures in place as well as an opportunity to sign “Thank You” cards to be given to active-duty military locally. Sign ups to volunteer on Dec. 18 for wreath-laying as well as the opportunity to sponsor a wreath will be available. Wreaths Across America merchandise may be purchased.
Karen Worchester, executive director of Wreaths Across America, said, “Over the past year, in light of the current health crisis, we feel this exhibit has taken on even more meaning by providing the opportunity for people to safely participate in something that is educational and inspiring, while supporting and giving back to the communities it visits. We are not here to ‘decorate graves.’ We are here to remember not their deaths but their lives.”
Wreaths Across America is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded to continue and expand the annual wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery begun by Maine businessman Morrill Worcester in 1992. The organization’s mission — Remember, Honor, Teach — is carried out in part each year by coordinating wreath-laying ceremonies in December at Arlington, as well as at more than 2,500 veterans’ cemeteries and other locations in all 50 states and overseas. Visit www.wreathacrossamerica.org for more information.
Photos courtesy Wreaths Across America
