Wreaths Across America Takes its Mission to Remember, Honor and Teach Across the USA
Wreaths Across America will be taking its mission on the road, bringing its rolling interactive museum, the Mobile Education Exhibit (MEE), to cities and towns across the US on its 2023 national tour.
“The goal of the Wreaths Across America Mobile Education Exhibit is to bring communities together and teach about the organization’s mission,” said Trish Gardner, Manager, Mobile Education Exhibit, Wreaths Across America. “The exhibit serves as a mobile museum, educating visitors about the service and sacrifice of our nation’s heroes as well as to serve as an official ‘welcome home’ station for our nation’s Vietnam Veterans.”
Since it first hit the road in 2019 the Mobile Education Exhibit and its WAA Ambassadors and volunteers have officially welcomed home over 3,300 Vietnam Veterans as part of the organization’s partnership with the United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration.
The tour stops are free and open to the public. All veterans, active-duty military, their families, and local residents are encouraged to visit, to ask questions, share stories, and experience this one-of-a-kind exhibit. The 48’ museum is equipped with a 24-person screening room for video presentations of the WAA mission and interactive computers that present the Veteran Wreath program, with locations, trucking supporters, and general sponsorship questions.
The 2023 national itinerary will begin in California in January, then head to Arizona, New Mexico and Southern Colorado. It rolls to Texas in May, and then turns to Kentucky and Tennessee. In July it will visit North Carolina, West Virginia, and Virginia, followed by stops in Maryland, Delaware, and Southern New Jersey. In September, it will return to Pennsylvania, New York, and Northern New Jersey. From there, the MEE will make its way up through New England for the next two months visiting all six New England states before heading home to Maine.
The exhibit finishes its tour each year as a member of the annual “Escort to Arlington,” joining a convoy of wreath-bearing trucks and Gold Star and Blue Star Families, veterans and other supporters in a week-long journey from Maine to Arlington National Cemetery. Described as the world’s longest veterans parade, the caravan will make stops at schools and memorials down the East Coast sharing the mission and bringing communities together, before arriving at Arlington on National Wreaths Across America Day, this year Saturday, December 17, 2022.
The tour is supported through donations by volunteers, volunteer groups and patriotic organizations including the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) whose members supported many of its 2022 stops.
To learn more about the Mobile Education Exhibit or submit a request for it to come to your community in 2023, visit their website.
