Do Good Twice

The holiday season is upon us and there is still time to honor a veteran in a meaningful way. As a second year volunteer location coordinator for Wreaths Across America (WAA) at historic Fort Lincoln Cemetery in Brentwood, Maryland, I am working toward a goal of 1,000 sponsored wreaths for this year’s ceremony on 19 December 2026. Fort Lincoln is home to veterans who served in wars from the Spanish-American War through the Gulf Wars, and each wreath placed on a grave is a simple but powerful act of remembrance.

Family volunteers at the first Wreaths Across America ceremony at Ft Lincoln cemetery in December 2025.

This year, you can do good twice. By sponsoring a wreath through this link, https://go.wreathsacrossamerica.org/HelloGirls, $5 from each sponsorship is donated directly to the Hello Girls Military Honors and Remembrance Project (M-HARP), a nonprofit program of the Doughboy Foundation. M-HARP is dedicated to ensuring that every WWI Hello Girl buried in an unmarked grave receives a Veterans Affairs grave marker. The VA markers are provided free of charge, but private cemeteries charge a setting fee to install them, ranging from $200 to $900 per marker. Last year, the $5 donations raised through this program added up and helped pay the setting fees for two VA grave markers for French-Canadian Hello Girls Alice Raymond and Germaine Lamontagne, who had lain in unmarked graves in Montreal until September 2026. We have not yet held our dedication ceremony, which we are planning for June or July 2027, but their markers are now in place. We have also confirmed that two additional Hello Girls, Cecil Joncas Breton and Jean Louis Cunningham, are buried in unmarked graves in Montreal and we hope to have their VA markers in place in time for the same ceremony. Your wreath sponsorship this year can help make all of this possible.

Recently set VA markers for Hello Girls Germaine Lamontagne and Alice Raymond in Cotes-des-Neiges cemetery in Montreal, QC,CA.

The deadline to sponsor a wreath is 2 December 2026. Wreaths sponsored by that date will be placed at the ceremony on 19 December 2026. If you miss the deadline, don’t worry. Any wreath sponsored after that date will automatically roll over to the ceremony in December 2027. Either way, your generosity honors a veteran and supports a mission that ensures our WWI Hello Girls are never forgotten.

Current Wreaths Across America flyer for Ft Lincoln cemetery. Our ceremony will start at noon this year.

Please use the link provided, https://go.wreathsacrossamerica.org/HelloGirls, to do good twice. Thank you!

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