CCB MEDIA PHOTO: Volunteers placing flags during Operation Flags for Vets at the Massachusetts National Cemetery in Bourne in 2016.
BOURNE – Operation Flags for Vets will once again be placing flags at the all the graves at the Massachusetts National Veterans Cemetery in Bourne for Memorial Day.
Volunteers will gather at the flag pole at the end of the cemetery’s Avenue of Flags on Saturday at 10 a.m. to place 68,000 flags in honor of our fallen veterans.
“We’ll have a very short ceremony, about 15 minutes, and then following that we’ll have our volunteers go out and place a flag on each and every grave in the cemetery,” said Paul Monti, the event’s organizer.
Monti created Operation Flags for Vets in 2011 to honor his son SFC Jared Monti, who was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2006 and the recipient of the Medal of Honor.
Jared was killed on his third attempt to rescue a fellow serviceman who was wounded.
Monti went to honor his son on Veterans Day of that year with a flag at his gravestone at the cemetery and was surprised to see no flags were planted at the cemetery.
He talked with an administrator of the facility to find out why, as all veterans graves require flags on Veterans Day under state law.
“I was told that flags were not allowed that I was not in Massachusetts I was standing on federal ground,” Monti said. “And their rule was no flags on the graves because they interfered with maintenance of the cemetery.”
That did not sit well with Monti, who spent more than four years pursuing a change of legislation to allow flags on Memorial Day and Veterans Day.
“Finally after four and a half years I received a letter giving me permission to flag all the graves provided that we buy all the flags, we place all the flags, we remove all the flags and we store all the flags,” Monti said.
Volunteers will also be needed Sunday, June 4 to take down all the flags starting at 10 a.m.
Monti said 70,000 new flags have been purchased for Memorial Day this year to replace the flags which have been planted during each of the holidays since 2011.
“Right now it’s kind of chaotic,” Monti said. “Getting flags in and trying to dispose of all the former flags has been a bit taxing.”
Volunteers are reminded to bring a long-shanked screwdriver to aid in the flag planting.
By BRIAN MERCHANT, CapeCod.com NewsCenter
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