STORY BY BILL PICKETT
Some students from North Ridge Middle School in Danville are helping with this year’s Wreaths Across America program in Danville. They are members of the Builders Club, sponsored by the Danville Golden K Kiwanis Club. The club recently took orders for sponsors to support some of the hundreds of wreaths which will be placed on graves at the National VA Cemetery in Danville later this month.
Kathy Delzell serves as one of the advisors to the club along with co-advisor Courtney Leemon. Delzell is a retired teacher who now works as a teaching assistant at North Ridge. Delzell recalls some of the early years when the club hoped to be able to donate 10 wreaths. But in some years the club was able to get sponsors for over 200 wreaths for Danville’s National VA Cemetery. Last year…despite the Covid pandemic…the club secured over 100 wreath sponsors. But Delzell notes that because of the pandemic, the students did not help place wreaths on the graves last year. This year, however, they do plan to help place wreaths, as Leemon explains.
AUDIO: It started with my co-chair, Kathy Delzell, she has a father who’s buried there at the cemetary. And so we decided that we would have the builder’s club do it. It’s a volunteer organization, so that was one of our volunteer programs, to do Wreaths Across America.
Delzell says the Builders Club raised over 15-hundred dollars through last year’s efforts. In addition to helping with Wreaths Across America, Delzell says the club also supports Veterans in other ways – including sending them cards on Valentines and Veterans Day.
