Lawrence resident Donna Hornberger-Beguelin, 74, has been placing flowers on every gravestone in the veterans' plot at Oak Hill Cemetery for Memorial Day for 27 years. This year she sought the help of local Boy Scouts.

There are more than 300 graves in the veterans’ plot at Lawrence’s Oak Hill Cemetery, and one woman knows the stories behind the stones.

“You read every one when you put those flowers out,” Donna Hornberger-Beguelin said on Thursday.

Every Memorial Day, Hornberger-Beguelin gets a close look at the grave markers, as she decorates each one with a sprig of red flowers and an American flag.

“It’s just something that’s important to me,” she said as she looked over the green field dotted with red bouquets. “I say every veteran needs a flower.”

But after 27 years, she’s ready for some help. “I’m getting too old to do all that bending over all the time,” she said with a chuckle. “It doesn’t hurt that day, but the next day is when I find the difficulty, getting up the next morning.”

So Hornberger-Beguelin called Lawrence Boy Scout Troop 61. Assistant Scout Master Harold Aiken said they were eager to get to work.

“I said, ‘Oh yeah, we’d be happy to help you,’ because of the way she had been so devoted to it over the years,” Aiken said.

Row by row, the Boy Scouts planted the artificial flowers on the top right corner of each marker. Then they lined the walkway with red, white and blue flowers in preparation for Memorial Day.

“It makes me feel good that people will see our troop’s hard work for the troops,” Scout Cody Williams said.

As Williams walked from stone to stone, he read the inscriptions aloud.

“This should be an eye-opening experience for the boys just to see how respected the veterans are for what they’ve done for our country,” Aiken said. “These people, they’re what our country is all about. They defended our right to freedom, and Scouts is similar to that.”

Within 30 minutes, the Boy Scouts had every flower in place. Looking over the finished product, Hornberger-Beguelin smiled at the Scouts’ work. She plans to continue organizing the annual tribute as long as she can, and Aiken said Troop 61 has an interest in completely taking over the Memorial Day tradition sometime in the future.