This week’s Feel-Good Friday pays tribute to Father’s Day and Flag Day by highlighting how young people are stepping up to honor those who served and sacrificed for our freedom.
Special thanks to our Max Daly, a regular reader who helped launch this by pointing me to the Cheektowaga, New York, story.
Recently, my husband, Lynn, and I have been enjoying a road trip through the Midwest, taking the opportunity to visit family and appreciate the beauty of our country. One of our stops was in Marysville, Kansas, where Lynn’s aunt lives. While there, we visited some meaningful spots for Lynn, such as the American Legion Post 163 and the Marysville City Cemetery to pay respects at family graves. Lynn’s father, a Marine in World War II, has a bronze medallion indicating his veteran status. Additionally, Lynn Rosegrant Brodrick, Lynn’s namesake and maternal uncle, served in the Army during World War I. The preservation of Lynn Rosegrant Brodrick’s 72-year-old gravestone is remarkable, largely due to Marysville’s policy of setting headstones on concrete bases. This prevents erosion and overgrowth, common issues at veteran gravesites, with the city also aiding in maintaining these gravestones.
Unfortunately, throughout the nation, many veteran gravesites in private cemeteries are not as well maintained, often becoming broken, faded, or submerged in the earth. Some veterans have been forgotten altogether, without headstones or with ones too damaged to read. Since 1973, the Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration (NCA) has managed national veterans cemeteries and veteran plots in private cemeteries, striving to address these issues.
Those gravestones within private cemeteries are often neglected and forgotten, particularly once the line of family has passed. In 2020, NCA launched a lovely initiative called “The Cemetery Restoration Project,” which forms partnerships with individuals, communities, and graveyard caretakers on how to honor and memorialize veterans who have been buried without headstones, as well as restore the private resting places of those veterans with the dignity and honor these men and women who served and sacrificed in service to our country deserve. The best part of this: Young people are leading the way.
One shining example was Memorial Day 2025 in Cheektowaga, New York. For two years, community resident Paul Mueller has organized a group to restore veterans’ gravestones. Most of his team are high school students. In 2024, Mueller and his team were able to restore 900 graves! In 2025, they restored around 500 veteran gravestones, and Mueller said that his goal is to ensure the 2,000 veteran grave markers at this cemetery are brought back and restored again. Such beautiful commitment. In terms of the young people, it is heartening that they are not only hungry to know history and learn from it, but to give back to those who have given to them.
Mueller added, “To see these young kids giving back, they’re reading the names on the stones. It’s really great.” Another student also shared, “It will be kind of cool to walk by and be able to say, ‘I helped do that’.”
In an interview with WIVBTV, Mueller also explained, “Many of us aren’t veterans, so this is our way of giving back to our country and to our veterans.”
Mueller’s team is not just high schoolers. Living veterans also love being a part of this project.
Army veteran Mitch Mayor, a volunteer with the group, told WIVBTV, “It just makes me feel good that I’m able, in my very small way, to give back to honor these ladies and gentlemen who served this great country of ours.”
WATCH:
Not to be outmatched, seven years ago, a young girl in Huntsville, Alabama, decided to study her family’s military history as a part of completing her Girl Scout bronze project. Emma Landrum soon discovered that there were veterans who had no gravestones, and it greatly upset the young girl so much so that she and her family launched the Forgotten Warriors Project. Now, at the age of 15, Landrum continues her work of raising funds to provide headstones to unmarked veteran graves.
She launched the Forgotten Warriors Project seven years ago, inspired by a discovery during her early days as a Girl Scout.
“She was so upset about it, so passionate about it and she was like, can I do that for my bronze project?” said Crystal Landrum, Emma’s mother.
What started as a Girl Scout Bronze Award project has now become Landrum’s mission — and a tribute to her late father, John Landrum, a United States Air Force veteran who died of COVID-19 a few years ago.
Such a weighty Father’s Day gift that honors her own Daddy.
“Mr. McFarland will always be in my heart. It was the first marker that I ever set and when my dad died, we got them right across from each other,” she said.
Donald McFarland received the first military marker funded by Landrum’s project. Today, he rests just feet away from John Landrum at Rose Lawn Cemetery in Decatur.
“I remember when me and my dad were just placing a marker on the grave and it was really amazing. Now he’s right here, right next to Mr. McFarland and it is awesome. It is amazing to know that he is that close to where we were placing a wreath on a grave,” Emma said.
Landrum constantly researches, finding more veterans buried without markers, and commits to ensuring they are honored with a gravestone.
“I didn’t know if she was going to stick with it or if it was just going to be a one and done. Well, it was not for her. She immediately decided she wanted them all,” Crystal [Landrum] said.
“I will not for the life of me quit this,” Emma said. “This is not because of my Girl Scout project. This is because of my heart.”
I’ll say it again: The kids are gonna be all right, thanks to great fathers, great veterans, and great soldiers. Happy Father’s Day, Happy Flag Day, and because of them and those who they inspire, may God continue to bless the United States of America!
