What Gets Passed On: How Scouts Come Together to Honor Their Veterans

For a lot of the Scouts who show up at Guilford Memorial Park on the Saturday before Veterans Day, it’s their first time in a cemetery.

Not their first time at this cemetery. Their first time in any cemetery.

They’re 11, 12 years old. They’ve never walked rows of headstones. Never done the quiet math on the dates. Never been in a place that asks you to slow down without anyone saying why.

And the man handing them a flag and pointing them toward the next grave? Leon Plummer. Scoutmaster. Air Force veteran.

Leon flew cargo planes out of Taiwan during Vietnam. C-130s. The kind of aircraft that goes wherever it’s needed — Hawaii to India. He was overseas for 22 months. Flew 49 combat missions. Came home without a scratch. 

He doesn’t mention any of this to the Scouts.

“A lot of these scouts, this is the first time they’ve ever been in a cemetery,” Leon says. “And they have no idea how many are in here.”

They learn fast. Three thousand flags takes about three hours to place. The Scouts fan out across 100 acres — veterans’ section first, then the graves scattered throughout. Parents come along, sometimes both of them. What started as a service project becomes something else: families walking together through a century of history, reading names, noticing details.

The Scouts don’t complain. They ask questions. They see headstones from wars they’ve only read about in textbooks — Spanish-American, World War I, Korea — and realize these aren’t just chapters in a book. They’re people. Buried here. In their town.

“They react well to it,” Leon says. 

Leon talks about how things used to be different. People grew up in the same neighborhood, lived close to where they started. Families stayed together. Death wasn’t something that happened in a separate building, out of sight.

“Today, they grow up, finish school, go to the ends of the earth,” he says. “They’re spread out so much.”

He’s not complaining. He’s just observing. The world changed. Kids don’t stumble into these experiences the way they used to.

So you create the experience on purpose. You hand them a flag. You show them where to place it. You let them walk the rows and figure out what they’re feeling.

That’s the transfer. Not a lecture about sacrifice. Not a history lesson. Just presence. Just doing something that matters, alongside people who’ve been doing it longer.  

The Scouts who start at 11 age out at 18. That’s how the program works. But by the time they leave, a new group has already started learning the rows, learning the rhythm, learning what it feels like to spend a Saturday morning honoring strangers.

Leon’s been at this for years. He’s watched kids come through, grow up, move on. Some of them bring their own kids back eventually. Some don’t. Either way, the project keeps going.

“There’s a whole different attitude with the older folks like us,” Leon says. “The younger people might not pick that up. Might not see the reason.”

But then he hands another flag to another 11-year-old. And the kid takes it, walks to the next headstone, and pushes it into the ground. 

Maybe they don’t see the reason yet. Maybe they won’t for years. But they’ll remember this. The morning. The quiet. The weight of something they couldn’t quite name.

That’s how it gets carried forward. Not by explaining. By including.

The Jamestown Veterans Committee places flags at Guilford Memorial Park twice a year — Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Volunteers of all ages are welcome.

Learn how you can get involved in the Jamestown Veterans Committee today. Plus, shop our grave marking flags if you would like to start a similar project in your community.