The Tuesday After:

A Ten-Year Tradition of Remembrance

By Lilly Wellons
March 30, 2026

Every Memorial Day, more than ninety thousand small American flags are placed at the gravesites of the Los Angeles National Cemetery, one for each Veteran buried across the cemetery's 114 acres in Westwood, just east of UCLA's campus. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts walk the rows before sunrise, pressing flags into the soil beside markers that date back to the Civil War.

But after the traditions of the holiday ends, the flags remain.

It takes days, sometimes weeks afterward, for the cemetery's staff to work to collect them a section at a time, in the summer heat. For years, that part of the work went largely unnoticed. Until about ten years ago, when a UCLA Veteran was living in graduate student housing overlooking the cemetery started paying attention.

"He came to me and said, 'This is kind of sad to see as a Veteran,'" recalled Emily Dahlem, Director of UCLA's Veteran Resource Center. "We're two, three weeks out from Memorial Day, and there was so much help to put the flags out, but there was no effort to clean them back up."

Emily went to the cemetery and set up a meeting with its director. She explained that UCLA students wanted to help and the response was immediate: "We would love some help," the director told her. "We didn't even think about asking you guys."

The following year, the VRC showed up and this May, they'll do it for the tenth time.

The event takes place every year on the Tuesday after Memorial Day, beginning at 6:30 a.m. Over the past decade it has grown from a small group of student Veterans into a coalition that includes UCLA's Air Force, Army, and Navy ROTC units, employee resource groups from companies across the region, local high school students, alumni, faculty, staff, and community members of all ages. Two and a half hours later, the flags are done.

"There's no delayed gratification," Emily said. "You can see exactly the work that you've done."

For ROTC students, many of them pre-service, the setting carries particular weight. The cemetery holds the graves of veterans from every major American conflict, from the Civil War through Afghanistan. Fourteen Medal of Honor recipients are buried there. So are more than a hundred Buffalo Soldiers. The oldest section at the north end still has original nineteenth-century markers.

"It's a very peaceful and reflective time," Emily said. "And with so much going on, sometimes it's hard to find those times."

For the Veterans who return each year, the event fits into a larger idea of what service means once you've left the military. "Military service doesn't end when I leave the military," Emily recalled a student veteran saying. "It just continues and it changes. Service is giving back to others, and this is giving back to those who came before us."

What Emily finds most special is how far the event has stretched beyond its original group. Volunteers have brought toddlers. They've brought their parents. Kids who came as children are now old enough to carry a bundle of flags themselves. "Seeing these young kids grow up with this idea that this is just something that we do," she said, "is something that's so beautiful."

The student who first noticed the flags and suggested the idea is now an alumnus, several years removed from campus. When Emily told him the event was celebrating its tenth year, he was characteristically understated. He didn't think it was that big of an idea, he told her. It was just the right thing to do.

"Doing the right thing at the right time for the right people without recognition," Emily said, "is true service."

This year's flag pickup takes place on Tuesday, May 26, 2026, from 6:30–8:30 a.m. at the Los Angeles National Cemetery (950 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90049). The event is open to all students, faculty, staff, and community members.