Volunteer Spotlight: What's Your Why?


Patrick Palmersheim knows what it means to live up to their legacy. He understands personal sacrifice for freedom and wants the mission to remember, honor, and teach to be carried out by generations to come.

Introducing Patrick as the Wreaths Across America Location Coordinator for the Iowa Veterans Cemetery is a bit of an understatement. Patrick is actually known as the “Father of Iowa’s Arlington.”  As the Executive Director of the Iowa Department of Veterans Affairs, he was involved from the beginning with the planning and construction of the Iowa Veterans Cemetery. He hosted the first Wreaths Across America event in 2008 when it opened. “We had four volunteers, including me, and we had to shovel snow off the headstones,” Patrick recalls of that year. “We only placed seven ceremonial wreaths. In 2020, we placed 3,447 veterans’ wreaths.”

Seeing how much the event means to families of the fallen is his motivation to continue as a Wreaths volunteer. “It’s that one letter or email, or someone showing up on Wreath Day who comes up to express to you how much it means to them. It’s so overwhelming to see it. It brings tears to your eyes. Many of these veterans paid the ultimate sacrifice, and we need to teach younger generations that it’s not just the veteran who paid, but their families did as well.” 

Patrick is a veteran of the Vietnam War. “I served two tours of duty and we weren’t treated that well by the public when we came home,” he shared. ”I was with the C-123 outfit out of Saigon. We did everything from spraying agent orange to hauling cargo. We would haul mail to the outposts too. The worst part of it was when we’d bring back the body bags. That seemed like a daily routine no matter what outpost they went to. I was twenty-one at the time, but some of these kids were eighteen, nineteen years old.”

Patrick uses the word “overwhelming” when he speaks of the support he receives as a volunteer from the Wreaths Across America staff and of the meaningful connections made every year. “One year, one of our lady truck drivers went all the way to Columbia Falls, Maine, to pick up the wreaths, and her husband was buried in the cemetery here in Iowa.”

Recently, Patrick was recognized by Wreaths Across America for over ten years of volunteer service. In 2019, Patrick was honored to receive the American Red Cross Heroes of the Heartland Award.

 

Thank you, Patrick, and all the volunteers at the Iowa Veterans Cemetery for helping us live up to their legacy. You can hear more from Patrick in our What's Your Why feature heard on Wreaths Across America Radio.