The Story of Wreaths in Chattanooga
(Reverse Timeline)
2025 The Patriot Guard Riders proudly continue their mission to honor all veterans at Chattanooga National Cemetery by serving as Location Coordinators. While we work year-round to expand our reach through local media and secure sponsorships for all 51,000+ veterans, our fabulous community has kept the momentum thriving on social media—ensuring National Wreaths Across America Day is a beautiful success. Wreaths Across America and our supporters did a wonderful job this year. To support our mission to ensure every hero is honored and every volunteer can participate, we are dedicating the upcoming year to expanding our event coordination. We warmly invite interested community members to collaborate with us as we build an even stronger, more inclusive tradition for next year.
2024Â This year, the Patriot Guard Riders proudly served as Location Coordinators, continuing the sacred mission to honor our veterans at Chattanooga National Cemetery. Thanks to our fabulous community stepping up on social media, we amplified our sponsorship message far and wide. Through the incredible joint support of Wreaths Across America and local donors, the community honored 25,248 Heroes on National Wreaths Across America Day! As we look forward, our committee is fully dedicated to expanding our reach and refining our data coordination so that we can fulfill our ultimate goal of honoring every single veteran site next year.
2023 For the second year in a row, Wreaths Across Chattanooga was recognized by Wreaths Across America as the NUMBER ONE wreath fundraising group in the nation! Mid-year, our organizational structure adjusted as members divided into two separate committees to honor our local veterans. Through this transition, our group embraced our official identity as Wreaths Across America, Chattanooga. The core team that established this movement locally in 2018 continues to guide our operations. The community’s response to this new chapter was breathtaking—volunteers placed 28,008 wreaths on Wreath Day. Together with wreaths placed prior to Wreath Day, 2023 achieved the ultimate dream: ensuring every single one of the 49,000 veterans resting in Chattanooga was formally honored.
2022 The Wreaths Across Chattanooga Committee officially received its 501(c)(3) status (Tax ID: 844641743). The composition of the leadership board expanded with the creation of eleven committees, with each chair serving as a member of the board. Alongside a team of dedicated volunteers, they worked together to achieve the annual goal of honoring every veteran at Chattanooga National Cemetery with a remembrance wreath in December. In June of 2022, Wreaths Across Chattanooga was proudly recognized by Wreaths Across America as the NUMBER ONE wreath fundraising group in the nation for 2021! Through this incredible momentum, the committee successfully coordinated the honoring of 30,742 veterans.
2019-21 Dedicated community advocates accepted the roles as Location Coordinators for the 2019 and 2020 Chattanooga Events. Alongside a passionate team of volunteers, they championed our core mission: to place a remembrance wreath on the headstone of every hero buried at Chattanooga National Cemetery. This mission was deeply amplified by the outstanding support of veteran groups like the Disabled American Veterans, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Chattanooga Patriot Guard Riders, alongside generous local businesses including Surf’s Up Car Wash. Thanks to these collaborative fundraising efforts and community events, our outreach grew tremendously, honoring just over 25,000 heroes by December 2021.
2018 Under the inspiration and guidance of Maj. Marty Nix, Civil Air Patrol, who would act as the Location Leader, the planning and leadership of the program was expanded, and a broader range of community leaders and representatives of a number of the area veteran organizations led the charge to expand the program and seek more sponsorships. This leadership group realized that reaching the 45,000 wreaths goal would require resources far in excess of previous years.  In cooperation with the Civil Air Patrol, the Chattanooga Patriot Guard Riders, and other veteran’s associations in the area, the group reached out to community leaders, the local media, and corporate groups to get closer to the ultimate goal. By the end of 2018, the Chattanooga community had raised support for nearly 10,000 wreaths, without any sponsorship from outside the local area
​2015 – 2017 CAP member, 2nd Lt. Austen Roberts took the reigns, and in 2016, due to a major contribution from an event sponsored by the Chattanooga Patriot Guard Riders that was spawned from the tragedy of the Fallen 5, Wreaths Across America saw the increase in community involvement and donated additional wreaths to support our efforts, allowing us to place 6,400 wreaths. In 2017, the efforts of the Chattanooga community and another donation from Wreaths Across America provided for 9800 wreaths. A week later we received an additional 12,000 wreaths from Wreaths Across America and therefore were able to honor approximately 45% of the heroes at the cemetery. This is still far short of being able to honor every veteran at Chattanooga National Cemetery each year, which would have required about 43,000 wreaths at that time.
2011 – 2014 Continuing after Maj. Broach’s years of leadership, two other Civil Air Patrol members served as Wreaths Across America Location Coordinators for Chattanooga from 2011 through 2014, and awareness increased, but wreath placement remained steady at 800-1,400 wreaths per year.
2006 – 2010 The Arlington Wreath Project (now W.A.A.) encouraged an alliance with Civil Air Patrol (the official U. S. Air Force Auxiliary) to organize wreath-laying ceremonies to be held at National Cemeteries and Memorial sites across the United States. In December, 2006, the first wreath laying ceremony was held at Chattanooga National Cemetery, under the leadership of Maj. Ron Broach, who was then serving as Civil Air Patrol’s Chattanooga Composite Squadron Commander at the time. Under Broach’s leadership, ceremonies were held every December (usually on the 3rd Saturday of the month). In the early years, under 100-200 wreaths were sponsored each year, but over the program’s first decade, though increased awareness and participation of dozens of other volunteer organizations, the average placement increased up to approximately 1,000 – 1,400 wreaths.