Action often begins with a catalyst. Sometimes, all it takes is just a few words.
After listening to a 2014 Wreaths Across America (WAA) presentation—about a nationwide effort to honor perished veterans with wreaths at their final resting place—at the Arkansas school where she was teaching, Angela Beason decided to attend the ceremony at her local veterans’ cemetery. On that December day, only 200 wreaths were on hand, far too few to adorn all the graves of the dead that they were intended to honor. A woman standing beside Ms. Beason wondered whether her son, who had lost his life in service, would receive one of these holiday garlands. While offering the woman encouragement—a wreath soon adorned the grave—Ms. Beason thought of her own husband Bubba, who was overseas at the time with the Air Force, and asked herself whether someone would one day lay a wreath on his grave.
That painful question was the catalyst. The following December, with Ms. Beason’s help, that local cemetery was all covered with wreaths.
