SAN ANTONIO – This Memorial Day Weekend, thousands of volunteers from around San Antonio gathered early Sunday morning at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery to plant flags at every gravestone on site.
The nonprofit behind the effort, Flags for Fallen Vets, said the event almost didn’t happen this year.
Earlier in May, the nonprofit reached out to KSAT with concerns that they had a sponsorship and volunteer shortfall in the hundreds for 2025. However, this weekend, enough volunteers like retired Chief Master Sgt. Bill McDonough Jr. showed up to put in the work.
"There’s a history there that you can touch and that I remember, and others remember," McDonough said. “So, each person is out here for their own reason. Some of these people don’t even have anybody that served; they’re coming out to remember."
McDonough said he’s been volunteering at the cemetery for the last 13 years with his family and precisely following Memorial Day protocol: planting a centered flag exactly one foot out from the gravestone, saluting, and saying the fallen veteran’s name.
“It’s good to come out here before you cook a burger tomorrow, you know?” McDonough said.
Another family volunteering, mother Gabby Williams, and her two daughters, Bailee and Gweneth, said coming to the cemetery is something they enjoy doing year-round. They come to honor her brother Ben, a veteran buried there.
“They never met him, but they get to, you know, hear the stories because when we come out, we always talk about him on the way home or on the way here,” Williams said. “It’s a good Memorial Day, right? That’s what it’s about.”
Anyone interested in volunteering and assisting the nonprofit in the future, click here.
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