Memorial Day

Perhaps the most amazing thing that we do as a cub scout family is to participate in the Luminaria at the National Cemetery in Fredericksburg.

Fredericksburg was a key city in the Civil War. Right smack between Washington DC (aka the Northern Capital) and Richmond, VA (aka the Southern Capital), it was the scene of several battles. On a hillside overlooking the Rappahannock is a cemetery that serves as the final resting place of nearly 15,000 Union Soldiers.


Each Memorial Day weekend, local cubscouts and girl scouts (and their parents) pitch in to place a flag and two luminaria at each grave. Because some graves contain one soldier, and others contain many, this averages out to one luminaria for each soul buried on that hill. It takes four hours to fill the sandbags, and another 3 hours to place them graveside.

On Saturday evening, the boy scouts light each candle during the hour-and-a-half before dusk. Taps is played on the half hour, and scouts lead tours of the cemetery, stopping at stations to tell Civil War stories. As the sun sets, the entire hillside becomes a glowing tribute to lives lost.

It's beautiful, and amazing to know that we had some small part in making it happen.