An Industry Gives Back to Those Who Have Served Their Country

WASHINGTON, D.C. – “Silence and Respect.”

Signs with this phrase are posted throughout Arlington National Cemetery. But until one walks slow and singly throughout this historic place, the words don’t really have meaning.

The reason for these gentle reminders, however, becomes astoundingly apparent within minutes as visitors stop to bow their heads in reverence as a small boy dressed neatly in a navy blue suit walks shyly beside his mother, wearing a spring floral dress and ribbon in her hair, to place a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier honoring the nation’s war veterans. As a soldier starts to play the bugle to the beat of the poignant and all too familiar “Taps,” tears well up in nearly every nearby eye. On this day alone – July 21st – there are 31 funerals at this cemetery. One can’t help but be respectfully silent watching this boy and his mother walk away alone as the soldiers impeccably and orderly march to their next funeral.

This one scene is the reason more than 400 landscape and lawn care professionals put their businesses on hold to volunteer their time to beautifying the grounds of this cemetery, as well as Historic Congressional Cemetery, each year as part of the Professional Landcare Network's Renewal and Remembrance event. But unlike a typical and noisy morning rush many contractors are familiar with as they ready their crews for work in the wee hours, industry members conduct their tasks here as quietly as possible, maintaining the utmost admiration for those who have lost their lives serving their country. Irrigation Association members calmly huddle in crew formation as they whisper a plan to lay pipe and install a system in a planting bed. Lawn care operators from Weed Man bow their heads and march to the tick, tick, tick of their spreaders as they add lime to the turf and soil in between rows of stark white gravestones. Beyond the gentle hum of a truck engine as one crew makes its way to assist another, the only sounds one hears are the rustling of leaves from a slow breeze, the birds twittering in the trees and the soft, slow bugle to remind all attendees on what sacred ground they step.

“We will apply lime to 250 acres today,” says Tom Shotzbarger, event chairman. “It’s a day of reverence where we work quietly. Today, our efforts are for them.”

For 12 years, PLANET has hosted this event, which drew industry professionals from 170 companies and 27 states this year. Eighty children were also in attendance, helping their parents to plant flowers while the majority of crews tended to Arlington’s 624 acres.

Eighty-two year old Wilfred Doerfler was one of these landscape professionals who also fought in World War II. He comes every year because of the tremendous feeling of pride he gets improving this prestigious land. “I’m very overcome by the beauty and respect paid to all the service men here,” he says. In fact, each year more than 4 million people pay their respects at Arlington National Cemetery.

“I consider it an honor to be able to give back by improving these grounds,” says Dan Cheslock, owner of Mountaineer Lawn Care, Morgantown, W. Va. “It is a small way that we can make a difference and support military families.”

In an economy where every business claims to be “green” in some way, Paul McDonough, chairman of the government affairs committee for PLANET, says: “Well, we’re the green industry, and if what we did today doesn’t show that we’re the green industry, I don’t know what does. Be proud because what we do matters.”

And to the men and women who are remembered at Arlington National Cemetery and the families who return their regularly to honor them, it does.