Get fit, while honoring our fallen veterans

The national Wreaths Across America (WAA) organization has partnered with event management and timing company CompetitorME to allow runners and walkers from all around the country the opportunity to log miles, get fit and help raise funds to support the WAA mission.

The complete list of the race options and open registrations can be found at competitorme.com/wreaths-across-america, and include:

• Escort to Arlington Challenge: This 737-mile virtual course starts in Columbia Falls, Maine, where WAA is headquartered and travels down the East Coast to Arlington, Virginia, just as the annual escort to Arlington does each December.
• Running for Wreaths (5K & 10K) Virtual Race – From Sept. 11-25, participants have the flexibility to run/walk/ruck/bike on the course of their choosing while raising funds to sponsor veterans’ wreaths for Participating Locations or Sponsorship Groups they support. The first race was conducted May 15-31
• Stem to Stone Remembrance Run (in-person in Maine on July 24, 2021, with virtual option): This will be the third year this race is hosted on the tip lands in Maine where balsam is grown and harvested each year to make the veterans’ wreaths placed on the headstones of our nation’s heroes.

Simply click on the individual event above and you’ll be brought to the official RunSignUp registration pages which have all the pertinent information, such as event dates, pricing, course maps, and donation opportunities.

Each individual race registration, sponsors a fresh balsam veteran’s wreath that will be placed on the headstone of an American hero on December 18, 2021, as part of National Wreaths Across America Day. To help the CGSC Foundation place wreaths in the Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery, enter the CGSC Foundation’s “Group ID number” – KS0101P – during the registration process.

Registrants will receive personalized racing bibs and commemorative finisher medallions, with event t-shirts. There is also a free RaceJoy app available for download by registrants to listen while they participate to learn more about the mission, hear stories of those who have served and the names of those that have sacrificed for our freedom.

Or, if you’d just rather help the CGSC Foundation without all the walking and running, click the button link below.

The CGSC Foundation is helping honor the veterans buried at the Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery this December. The initial goal is to honor the 900 veterans buried in Section N of the cemetery, but the larger goal is to inspire enough people and organizations to join them in placing a wreath on every grave – more than 23,000 – in the cemetery.

The CGSC Foundation encourages all friends, family, staff, faculty, students and alumni of CGSC and the CGSC Foundation to sponsor a wreath to honor the veterans buried at Fort Leavenworth. For more information and to sponsor a wreath, visit the Foundation’s Wreaths Across America site by clicking the link below.

https://www.wreathsacrossamerica.org/pages/164828

Wreaths Across America is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded to continue and expand the annual wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery begun by Maine businessman Morrill Worcester in 1992. The organization’s mission – Remember, Honor, Teach – is carried out in part each year by coordinating wreath-laying ceremonies in December at Arlington, as well as at thousands of veterans’ cemeteries and other locations in all 50 states and beyond.

The Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery was established in 1862 as one of 14 national cemeteries at that time. Today the cemetery has more than 23,000 graves of veterans representing every conflict since 1812. Notable veterans buried at Fort Leavenworth include Captain James Allen, 1st U.S. Dragoons, who died in August 1846. Allen’s is the oldest known military grave in the cemetery. Also, the remains of Brigadier General Leavenworth, the fort’s namesake, were disinterred from Woodland Cemetery in Delhi, N.Y., and reinterred in the national cemetery on Memorial Day in 1902. Nine Medal of Honor recipients are also buried there, including Capt. Thomas W. Custer, brother of Lt. Col. George Custer. Thomas received the Medal of Honor twice while serving in the U.S. Army, Company B, 6th Michigan Cavalry; first for capturing the flag at Namozine Church, Virginia, on May 3, 1865, and second for actions at Sailor’s Creek, Virginia, April 1865. Custer died in 1876.