My parents are buried in section 68, which is one removed from section 60. Section 60 is one of the larger groups of plots, and I suspect there is a lot of traffic there, both from ceremonies for newly buried military personnel to the families making treks there whose loved ones have been buried within the last year or two.
I have seen the traffic through that area, and there are a lot of flowers, pictures, pieces of paper and such. I have seen some parts that were unsightly to me, but my guess is that they try to let people take advantage of the gray area between “no artifacts at all” to “we will remove the items when we get to them”. As a result, there are a lot of things heaped around there.
As for Salon, take my word on it. They are one of the most virulently leftist websites there are. The poster above had it right when he said they probably have blood on their hands.
Articles like this from people like those at Salon REALLY piss me off. They sound oh, so concerned, speaking with hushed voices how terrible it is, how someone should do something about this terrible injustice, but do everything in their power to ensure our men and women are spat upon both literally and figuratively when they come stateside. I detest them.
If God was interested in being JUST to those on earth, there would have been lightning bolts when Salon personnel entered the property.
From the ANC website:
“Floral Tributes at Gravesites
Fresh cut flowers may be placed on graves at any time.
Artificial flowers may be placed on graves October 10th through April 15th.
Planting of flowers, shrubs, etc. is prohibited.
Potted plants are permitted during the period 10 days before and 10 days after Easter.
Christmas wreaths are permitted during the Christmas season.
Floral items will be removed from the graves as soon as they become faded and unsightly.
Statues, vigil lights, flags, etc. and any type of commemorative items are not permitted on graves except for flags placed on the graves by the government.
Floral items and other types of decorations are not to be secured to the headstone or marker.
There will be a general cleanup of all floral items on graves 10 days after each holiday-Easter, Memorial Day, and Veterans Day.”
I also contacted a ranking member of The Old Guard Association (TOGA) who is very knowledgeable in these matters who sent me the following email:
“Having been to a number of funerals in Section 60 (or any other section that I've seen), I can tell you that no one is removing anything from the gravesites during the opening hours of ANC. As I noted previously, it is ANC policy to remove items from gravesites after the allowable period of time. Also, as to record keeping of grave markers, ANC has a data bank, backed up by a card system backed up by a file on each grave. It works as last week during Ray K's funeral, one of our TOGA directors (who worked there after his retirement from active duty) went to the ANC Admin building to see if a service colleague's wife was buried there. A quick click of the computer produced the name and location of the grave and when we stopped by, it was clearly marked as the correct one.”
Rimorel, you and several other commenters on this thread are absolutely correct. These Salon articles are gross exaggerations or just outright lies. I'm sorry I fell for them and posted this crap getting people riled up for no reason - I should have known better. As for the commemorative items people are placing on graves, they are causing the clutter in violation of posted regulations and the author of the article should have said so.