Wreaths Across America set the ambitious goal of honoring all 230,000 veterans at Arlington National Cemetery by placing a fresh evergreen remembrance wreath on each headstone, according to a news release. 2014 marked the 150th anniversary of Arlington National Cemetery, the 23rd year Wreaths Across America has placed wreaths there in December and the first year that every veteran’s grave was honored, as well as thousands more across the country.

“I’ve always felt strongly that each and every one of the brave men and women laid to rest here must be honored,” said Morrill Worcester, Maine wreath-maker and founder of WAA, in the news release. “It seems fitting that we reached our goal on the cemetery’s 150th anniversary.”

Worcester began donating and delivering wreaths to Arlington in 1992 as a personal gift of honor. In 2014, nearly 50,000 volunteers descended on Arlington for National Wreaths Across America Day Dec. 13 and placed remembrance wreaths on headstones. As part of the special ceremony, Worcester and five of his seven grandchildren placed the two millionth wreath (since 1992) on the grave of the cemetery’s first military burial, Pvt. William Christman.

The annual wreath delivery from Harrington, ME, to Arlington National Cemetery is known as the “world’s largest veterans parade,” according to the organization’s website. A milelong convoy of tractor-trailers, Patriot Guard motorcycle riders, buses and cars carrying wreaths, veterans, families of fallen soldiers and volunteers travel several days from Maine down the east coast, stopping at schools, memorials, veterans’ homes and various community locations in six states, spreading the group’s mission to Remember, Honor and Teach. WAA is committed to teaching younger generations about the importance of honoring those who sacrificed so much to protect their hard-earned, valuable freedoms.

Fresh evergreen wreaths are placed on veterans’ headstones because the organization wants people to see the tradition as “a living memorial to veterans and their families,” renewed annually.

In 2014, more than 725,000 remembrance wreaths were placed in honor of veterans at 1,015 locations nationally, including special memorials at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, Bunker Hill in Boston and Charleston Naval Shipyard in South Carolina; and a wreath for every victim of the 9/11 attacks in New York City, the Pentagon and Shanksville, PA.

Wreaths Across America is a national nonprofit organization and it receives no government funding. Worcester continues to be a major donor of wreaths, but individual wreath sponsors, corporate donors, volunteer fundraisers and truck drivers and companies pay for most of the costs for the program.

WAA’s theme for 2014 was “Remember, Honor, Teach —Don’t Say I Should Have, Say I Did!”

For more information, visit www.WreathsAcrossAmerica.org.