More than 175 flags raised at Santa Cruz Memorial Park to mark Veterans Day

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (KION) More than 175 American flags were raised around the Santa Cruz Memorial Park Wednesday to mark Veterans Day, according to staff.

Each of the flags has been draped on the casket of a veteran, and each flag has information about the veteran on it. They were raised Wednesday at 7:30 a.m. by 14 members of Santa Cruz Warriors staff, members of the Santa Cruz Rotary club and Memorial Park staff.

“We would usually fly over 400 flags at Santa Cruz Memorial Park and 320 at Oakwood Memorial Park but Covid-19 concerns halted that this year, although we didn’t get to fly all the flags today we are very grateful to the Warriors for stepping up and making sure that we could post the 175 flags around our Veterans 'Garden of Honor' at Santa Cruz Memorial Park this Veterans Day... Santa Cruz Memorial has been serving this community for over 150 years, although the Warriors are bit newer to Santa Cruz than us, they have shown that they are much more than a sports/entertainment organization, in a short period of time they have become an integral part of our community, their volunteer efforts in all areas of the community demonstrate that, we were grateful for their help today honoring our Veterans," said Santa Cruz Memorial President Randy Krassow.

The flags are set to be taken down at 3 p.m. so they can be folded and prepared to be stored until Memorial Day 2021.