Calverton National Cemetery

The solemn annual flag placement ritual returned to a rainswept Calverton National Cemetery this morning, after a year off due to the COVID-19 pandemic last year.

Riverhead's Memorial Day parade will return this year, after being canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic last year.

There were no veterans groups, no music, no audience under the overcast sky early this morning. It was a Memorial Day unlike any other since Calverton National Cemetery held its first Memorial Day ceremony 42 years ago.

The VA official in charge of memorial affairs has rejected County Executive Steve Bellone's plea to allow group flag placement at Suffolk's two national cemeteries for Memorial Day.

Some 6,000 Scouts and their family members placed flags on each of the 225,000 graves in the country’s largest — and busiest — national cemetery.

The first monument at Calverton National Cemetery honoring women in military service, past and present, will be unveiled and dedicated during ceremonies there Oct. 13.

Several hundred people attended Memorial Day ceremonies at Calverton National Cemetery this afternoon, marking the 39th annual such ceremony at the nation’s busiest national cemetery.

Scouts placed American flags on the nearly quarter-million graves at Calverton National Cemetery this morning.

Veterans groups from across eastern Suffolk County participated in Veterans Day ceremonies this afternoon at Calverton National Cemetery, witnessed by an audience of several hundred spectators.

Thousands of volunteers decorated more than 230,000 graves at Calverton National Cemetery with small U.S. flags in the 22nd annual flag placement day conducted by Suffolk County scout troops.