In a city with a cemetery whose very trees have been known to elicit heated historical debate, the fact that folks consider it important to rightly honor their dead is pretty much what one would expect. It’s not just because of its history (or its old trees) that Suffolk’s Cedar Hill Cemetery is so beloved and well tended.

The Albert G. Horton Jr. Memorial Veterans Cemetery has been around for only a tiny fraction of the time Cedar Hill has been used as a final resting place for people in Suffolk, but the veterans’ cemetery has become a place of great pride for the city during the few short years it has been operating.

An event on Saturday proved why the facility is so important to Suffolk and why the people of Suffolk are so important to the cemetery. The Horton Wreath Society hosted the annual wreath-laying ceremony there, and hundreds of people turned out, even under gray skies threatening to dump their rain at any minute. By the end of the morning, more than 5,000 wreaths with red bows had been placed at the base of headstones all over the cemetery.

It was a beautiful sight, one that moved many who were attending to tears, and we urge folks in Suffolk who were unable to attend Saturday’s ceremony to take the time out of their busy schedules during the next week or so to drive out to Horton and spend a few quiet minutes reflecting on lives of the men and women buried there and relishing the peaceful setting and the arresting image of thousands of green-and-red wreaths arrayed in columns and rows.

The Horton Wreath Society would not exist without the hard work of some Suffolk people who believed it was important to honor veterans at Christmas, no matter how hard it might seem to do. The same is true of the Horton cemetery, itself, which relied on the support of officials representing Suffolk at all levels of government in order to go from dream to reality.

Suffolk has a long history of providing a high level of respect and honor to the people buried in its cemeteries. It’s good to see that respect and honor extended so readily to the very deserving men and women whose remains are at rest in the Albert G. Horton Jr. Memorial Veterans Cemetery.