Sunnyside Memory Gardens cemetery in Charles City, Iowa is removing military markers by veterans’ headstones in the cemetery. When one family asked why, they were told it was because the markers are “too hard to mow around.”
Questioned about the decision, Leland Boyd, St. Charles Township board of trustees chair, said the rules for removing the markers are not new, but simply “haven’t been totally enforced” until now.
The rule pertaining to the markers is Iowa Insurance Division rule 807, which says: “United States’ flag markers may be placed on veteran’s interment spaces to observe Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day. If still present, Memorial Day decorations will be removed by cemetery personnel on the seventh day after Memorial Day and Veterans Day.”
According to KIMT, Sarah Shearman’s normal practice was to put up the military marker by her grandfather’s headstone on Memorial Day and leave it up all summer long. Thanks to the recent enforcement of rule 807, that is no longer allowed.
Shearman places the marker there every year because her grandfather fought in the Navy during WWII.
Shearman said, “This is where my grandparents are buried and normally we just leave it by the shepherds hook all summer long.” She added the cemetery said they removed the markers “because it’s too hard to mow around them.”
“I don’t think a military marker that is small is too much to ask for all they gave to our country,” she said.
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