Legion members spend thanksgiving showing their thanks

Thanksgiving is a time for people to take stock of their lives and give thanks for their blessings.

And that is exactly what Herman Barkemeyer and a handful of volunteers from the Barrhead Royal Canadian Legion did on Thanksgiving Monday, Oct. 9. They thanked the more than 200 Canadian Armed Forces service people who are buried in Barrhead’s Field of Honour by planting miniature Canadian Flags on their gravesites.

“It is something they have been doing for quite a while,” Barkemeyer said, adding they don’t always plant them on Thanksgiving. “And we didn’t always use flags.”

The tradition of honouring deceased service people started in 1989, but back then Legion volunteers used wreaths.

“About four days after the Remembrance Day services, we (Legion volunteers) would pick up all the wreaths people had placed at the War Memorial and store them at the Field of Honour,” he said, adding when they had enough wreaths they would put them on the graves of veterans.

The Anglican Church donated the cemetery in 1925 for the sole purpose of honouring Barrhead’s veterans.

However, it did not take to long for the volunteers to realize that while they wanted to do something, wreaths were not the right solution.

“By the time spring rolled around the wreaths would look just horrible and we had to do this big cleanup so we decided to switch to flags instead,” Barkemeyer said, adding while the vast majority of the flags are planted at the Field of Honour, the Legion also places about another additional 100 flags at graves of any veteran who rests in any of County of Barrhead cemeteries. In addition to the flags, the Legion also puts a wreath on the front gate or memorial at each cemetery.

Out of the about 40 cemeteries in the county the Legion estimates about 20 or so are home to veterans.

Because there is no definitive list of which gravesites belong to service members, it did take some effort and time for them to learn where each of the veterans were buried. For the most part Legion volunteers determine which gravesite belongs to service people, walking through each of the cemeteries and looking at all the tombstones.

“We’ve gotten pretty good at knowing where everyone is. My wife is the bookkeeper and she knows what row and where in that row they are in,” Barkemeyer said, adding they also task Legion members who are from the different communities and are familiar with their family histories.

For those volunteers who are not as familiar with a particular cemetery the Legion has also created maps.

“It is a Legion affair and we do what we can to make sure each of our service people are honoured,” Barkemeyer said.