Memorial Day: Ex-Marine places flags at Elgin cemetery

As he has done for the past 18 years, rain or shine, Don Seyller prepared for this Memorial Day by placing small flags on veterans' graves in Elgin's Bluff City Cemetery.

This year's tally: more than 600 flags planted. If that sounds daunting, consider this: “I'd do the entire cemetery if they'd let me,” he said with a smile.

That would entail adorning the graves of 2,800 veterans, from the Civil War through the most recent conflicts, buried on 120 acres of the city-owned cemetery.

But the flag adornment is a communitywide project, and Seyller is joined by 100 other volunteers in the project that was started in the 1980s and is overseen by the Elgin Patriotic Memorial Association. This volunteer group, consisting of nearly 20 local organizations, is celebrating its 125th year of coordinating Elgin's Memorial Day programs.

“I have an incredible amount of respect for those who have served in the military,” said Seyller, who also did a stint in the U.S. Marines. “I take a day off work and dress for the occasion. I'm here rain or shine. I even made a special tool that I use to get the flags into the ground more easily.”

Originally assigned to just one section of the cemetery, Seyller kept asking for a bigger assignment.

“I was delighted when I was able to take on the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) section,” he said. Opened in 1892, this area is the site of Elgin's Memorial Day programs and filled with the graves of Union veterans from the Civil War as well as those from later years.

Seyller said he has taken a lot of photos of veterans' graves and done research on some of the veteran's graves that he places flags by.

“One was a man who was killed in action in the Korean War nine days after his 18th birthday,” he said. “My son just turned 19 years old, and that really hit home to me.”

Sue Kaszuba, along with her husband, Dan, who is a U.S. Air Force veteran from the Vietnam era, oversee the committee that heads up the massive volunteer effort.

“We put out over 2,800 flags, and the cemetery staff gives us new names to add each year,” she said.

An array of local military service and other organizations participate. “Some people come out as individuals and some as families,” Kaszuba said. “Many do it in honor of veterans they knew.”

And those volunteers guard their assignments as enthusiastically as Seyller, Kaszuba said, noting that there are no new areas waiting to be assigned.

“This is wonderful program that just keeps going on year after year, she said. “It's such a great tribute on Memorial Day. Bluff City Cemetery is so beautiful with all the flags.”