Bronx Community Board 7 (CB7) members joined residents for the annual “flagging of the graves” event on Wednesday, May 24, ahead of Memorial Day weekend, Volunteers at Woodlawn Cemetery on Webster Avenue on the Norwood-Woodlawn border also participated by locating the gravesites of U.S. veterans and placing an American flag at each grave.

 

As CB7 members arrived, with invited guests, Bonnie Morales, army veteran and support coordinator at NY Outreach Services, and Ronald Downs, suicide prevention community engagement & partnerships coordinator for the local VA hospital in Fordham Manor, they were greeted by Meg Ventrudo, executive director of Woodlawn Conservancy. The visitors were then split up into groups and given maps and plenty of flags.

 

According to Barbara Selesky, media coordinator at Woodlawn, the flagging tradition began after the September 11^th attacks of 2001. Selesky recalled, “It was after 9/11, when there was a surge in patriotism that Woodlawn’s volunteers took on the responsibility of placing flags on the graves of those who served our country.” She added, “We began with a list of 200 names, and with the assistance of the local American Legion post, we added to the list. Then we sent our eager researchers out with clipboards to write down the names of those memorialized with a military marker.”

 

Selesky said that to date Woodlawn has identified 8,600 U.S. service men and women buried among the 300,000+ individual graves and 1,000+ private mausoleums. Woodlawn was designated a national historic landmark in 2011. According to Woodlawn officials, military leaders buried at the cemetery include Navy Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, newspaper publisher, Joseph Pulitzer, and Lucy Bainbridge, who served as a nurse during the Civil War, to name a few.

Intensely studying his map, Elderfield Luke of East 168th Street was observed as he stopped, double-checked, and then placed a new flag at the resting place of four members of the Trippedo family. As the elderly man stepped around the headstone, he placed his hand on the top of the headstone as if touching someone.

 

Participating in Woodlawn’s flagging event for the first time, Luke explained, “My niece called me about this. Her son, who is a Gold Star, her son died in Iraq. So, I came out today to place flags at the graves.” Luke said he was taking part in the event as a way of “remembering” his great-nephew and “the other fallen service members.”

 

Longtime Norwood resident and retired Army National Guard member, Chris Perkins, was with the 145th Maintenance Company based in the Kingsbridge Armory on September 11, 2001. His members responded to the World Trade Center in the days after the attack and were deployed to Iraq on more than one occasion.

Perkins is now a member of AmVets, described as the nation’s most inclusive, congressionally chartered veterans service organization, representing the interests of 20 million veterans.

 

After spending the day scouring a small portion of the 400-acre cemetery, searching for buried veterans, including the estimated 100 U.S. military service members who Woodlawn officials estimate were buried there between 2021 and 2022, Perkins told Norwood News, “It was my honor to place flags upon the monuments of our veterans this year. I hope to see more people, especially more young people, doing this in the future.”

 

Having led the CB7 group at the Woodlawn flagging event the past two years, Chad Royer, the board’s veterans affairs committee chair, said after the event, “I can tell you that folks who attended the event found it very rewarding.” He continued, “I’ve come to find that some of our own community partners have either passed by Woodlawn Cemetery on occasion or have never stepped foot in the cemetery at all until they attended this event. For that reason, I’m grateful that we had a decent attendance.”

Royer pointed out, “Although I’ve never served in the military, my contribution to our veterans is advocacy, acknowledgement, and support. Some of my friends and colleagues have relatives who used to serve, and it made me realize how much our civilians really do not know and understand the things that our veterans go through, long after they transition from the military.”

 

Recently appointed CB7 district manager, Karla Cabrera Carrera, joined Royer at the Woodlawn flagging event. The board had also held their own flagging event on May 13 at the Bronx Victory Memorial on Mosholu Parkway in Bedford Park for a second consecutive year. Cabrera Carrera told Norwood News, “Moving forward, CB7 will host two yearly, flagging events at Bronx Victory Memorial to commemorate Memorial Day and Veterans Day.”

 

She added, “The events, which are spearheaded by our Veterans Affairs committee, will provide a platform for all community [members] who wish to honor our veterans, past and present.”

According to Selesky, other groups who participated in this year’s flagging event included the Boy Scouts of America, NYC Department of Veterans Affairs, including Commissioner James Hendon, and students from St. Barnabas High School. The number of volunteers this year was over 150.

 

Woodlawn Cemetery is located at 4199 Webster Avenue and is open 7 days a week between 8.30 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. For information on upcoming events, tours and other special events, as well as its history, visit www.woodlawn.org.