Making sure to 'Remember – Honor – Teach'

The rows of silent, gray headstones on the wind-swept grasses of the Washington State Veterans Cemetery west of Medical Lake have a little more color this Christmas season, thanks to a nationwide observance that began with a boyhood impression and a surplus of holiday product.

Last Saturday after a brief ceremony, family members of veterans laid to rest in the cemetery fanned out over the quiet, mist-shrouded grounds to waiting stacks of boxes of wreaths to select a ribbon-decorated symbol of the season and place it at their loved one's marker. Members of the military were on hand to make sure...