Army of Scouts Salutes Thousands Who Died

Four members of Girl Scout Troop 477 awakened from a slumber party at 6 a.m. Saturday, eager to go to the cemetery.

“Most of the girls have never been to a funeral,” said troop leader Maggie Olsen, standing amid thousands of stone markers at the Los Angeles National Cemetery in Westwood. “They have uniformly loved this experience.”

Around her in the cool, gray morning, hundreds of children in olive, blue and tan uniforms skittered across the green lawns like blown leaves in the fall. A festive carpet of red, white and blue unrolled, as young scouts of all stripes placed government-issue, 2-foot-tall flags on 78,200 graves, in what has become an annual pre-Memorial Day ceremony.

“I’ve always driven by and seen the flags and thought, ‘Oh, how nice,’ ” without knowing how much work went into erecting them, said Bob Meyer, an assistant district commissioner for the Boy Scouts.

What used to take a small force of Boy Scouts “most of the day” to do 20 years ago was accomplished Saturday in just over an hour by an army of 1,200 Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Brownies and Girl Scouts. The turnout was so large, in fact, that the scouts ran out of colorful “Saluting Those Who Have Served” patches, provided by the American Legion.

While the younger children had no grasp of what cemetery boulevards like Antietam or Marne stood for, many older scouts seemed to have thought more than superficially about the costs and rewards of combat. Asked how the morning had affected him, 9-year-old Andrew Marek of Van Nuys said he was “a little sad and a little happy. You can see all those who fought, but it’s sad because they all died.”

Wynne Ritch, a former Eagle Scout in short pants who is director of the Crescent Bay District of the Boy Scouts, unabashedly embraces the patriotic message behind the event. “The Boy Scouts of America stands for mom and apple pie. We’re very bold about patriotism,” he said.

Others may find their own meanings. Olsen, who brought her troop from St. Martin of Tours School in Brentwood for the third year, considers the group’s participation to be “sort of a spiritual experience. Children tend not to know about death and dying.”

Believing children need to get “out of themselves,” she urged her troop members to select names on the grave stones. And then to think about those people as they march today in the annual Brentwood Hometown Parade.

Lucia McKelvey, a freckle-faced girl of 10, said she felt a special kinship with Raymond Hedrick, a World War II private who died in 1969. Also a native of Ohio, she picked him “because my birthday is Sept. 23,” just like his.