🔒Worcester Wreath Co. grows nonprofit spinoff

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It's a warm late afternoon in September, with enough of the calendar year left that even the boldest retailers can't roll out their Christmas marketing yet. Morrill and Karen Worcester are sitting in a back room at the headquarters of Worcester Wreath Co. in Harrington, which is also a staging ground for Morrill's many other seasonal businesses. The two are winding down after a long day.

“He doesn't know it yet, but he's going to take me to dinner,” Karen jokes.

The family business's blueberry harvest is just about complete, but their minds have already turned to holiday wreaths. In truth, wreaths rarely leave their thoughts. Morrill heads the Worcester Wreath Co., one of the largest wreath-making enterprises in the United States, while Karen is executive director for Wreaths Across America, a nonprofit organization that provides wreaths and other holiday decorations for the gravesites of armed services veterans.

Wreath-making might be seasonal work, but preparing for it is a year-round endeavor, Morrill says. He grows his own balsam supply on about 4,200 acres in Washington County. The company ramps up wreath production in October and provides seasonal employment for about 400 workers through mid-December.

When speaking, Morrill quickly reveals a farmer's aptitude for his supply chain, talking knowledgeably about insect control, sunlight and spacing.

“When you're passionate about something, you think about it all the time,” Morrill says.

A passion for business permeates the couple's conversation, but there is another theme that arises, that of gratitude. Even when they discuss old customers who cut ties with them years ago, like the iconic L.L.Bean, they are grateful. L.L.Bean was their biggest customer in 43 years of business, a relationship that ended in May 2009 following a dispute over production of wreaths for the 2008 holiday season. The dispute ultimately wound up in court and L.L.Bean was ordered to pay Worcester Wreath almost $1 million, an award later reduced by $304,000.

At the time, the outdoor outfitter made up 90% of Worcester's business, according to Worcester's attorney who was quoted in press accounts of the suit. Now it has assembled a roster of 35 new customers to replace the volume of L.L.Bean sales. Among that mix is Wreaths Across America, which makes up about 30% of Worcester Wreath's annual income, says Morrill, who declined to provide specific figures. Other large customers in the post-L.L.Bean era are Sam's Club and 1-800-FLOWERS.

Yet Karen mentions that the L.L.Bean contract put several of their kids through college, and Morrill remembers how cordial the staff were.

“We really never found a bad person to work with there, right down to the janitor that cleaned their floors,” he says.

That sense of gratitude is most evident when the talk turns to Wreaths Across America, their holiday homage to the sacrifice U.S veterans made for this country. It becomes clear that their sense of indebtedness isn't something they put on like a winter coat when the holiday season rolls around. The Worcester family only has one direct connection to the military, a son-in-law who is a Marine, but Karen says that when she meets the mother of a fallen veteran, she's well aware what kind of sacrifice that woman has made for the Worcester family.

“Her son is resting in a grave so my sons can continue to live their lives,” she says.

Seeing an opportunity

Success is no sure thing in Washington County, and Morrill realized early on that he had to think on his feet and work hard to make a good living. In 1971, while attending college, Morrill was working at a vegetable stand when he overheard a customer in Boston asking for Christmas wreaths or trees. Wreath-making was still something people only did in their garages or kitchens in Washington County, and Morrill hadn't been involved in the cottage industry. That didn't stop him from taking 500 wreaths down to Boston that winter, and his wreath-making company was born.

But no one makes a year-round business selling wreaths, and Morrill has always had several other ventures on his plate. Right from the beginning of her courtship with him, Karen knew she was getting a hardworking partner and that she would have to keep up. He integrated their first date with a round of trash-hauling for his waste management company, she says.

“He had this big trash truck, and on the side it said, 'Your garbage is our bread and butter,'” she says with a laugh.

Morrill no longer hauls trash, but he's created businesses that tap nearly every seasonal aspect of Washington County's economy over the years, including producing asphalt, concrete and blueberries.

“In Washington County, Maine, you have to be diversified and you have to be able to roll with it,” he says.

Growth on a roll

The wreath-making business kept growing, but not without some logistical headaches. Like most wreath-makers, Morrill used to have his balsam tips trucked in from elsewhere, often from Canada. He recalls anxious weeks waiting for the supply to come in and hoping that the material was up to snuff. After years of such anxiety, Morrill decided in 1999 it was better to be his own balsam supplier, and he bought acreage to pick his own tips. Now he says he's able to ensure quality material for his product.

“Sometimes the same day's pick is used in a product and sent out,” he says.

As wreath-making has expanded, the company also has had some growing pains as it's shifted away from its cottage industry roots; it was a supply-chain mistake in 1992 that gave birth to Wreaths Across America. Back then, the Worcester Wreath Co. was still contracting wreaths to be made by independent suppliers, instead of having them made in a central facility, as it does now. That December, Morrill discovered he had overbought some 500 wreaths and he knew he couldn't find a home for them on the marketplace because of the late date.

But he remembered once visiting Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia as a child, and a plan was hatched. He contacted then-Sen. Olympia Snowe to get access to the cemetery and enlisted the help of a local trucking company, Blue Bird Ranch Inc. He and a few employees went down and quietly laid the wreaths on veterans' graves. Karen says Morrill came back moved by the experience.

“It made such an impact on him to have the honor of doing that,” Karen says. “He said, 'You know, we're always going to do that.'”

And they did, quietly, until 2005, when a Pentagon photographer happened upon a section of graves adorned with Worcester Wreaths. Snow had fallen recently, and the photographer took a shot and put it on the Pentagon's website. The photo's composition was exquisite, capturing the symmetry of the graves and wreaths coated with the asymmetrical snow, and the solemnity of the graveyard juxtaposed with the gaiety of the season.

The photo went viral. Morrill soon was inundated with emails, both requests for wreaths for fallen loved ones and requests to help. The Worcesters had to hire someone to return all the money people were donating, as they weren't a non-profit.

Though touched, they couldn't fulfill every request. Instead, Morrill created the idea of an honor guard in 2006 that would escort a wreath to each state for each branch of the military and in honor of POWs and MIAs. The wreaths were laid down simultaneously at ceremonies throughout the country.

In 2007, the Worcesters formed a separate entity, Wreaths Across America, a nonprofit to provide wreaths for as many gravesites of as many veterans as possible each year. The nonprofit and thousands of volunteers now lay roughly 500,000 wreaths at gravesites in some 900 communities each holiday season.

In 2012, 406,000 wreaths were placed on veterans' graves, of which 105,000 were lain at Arlington National Cemetery. Worcester Wreath Co. and Wal-Mart are the biggest suppliers of wreaths, selling them to Wreaths Across America at a discount.

The nonprofit accepts sponsorships for the wreaths and this year launched a website to enhance that effort and also raise funds for other nonprofits. Charities or civic groups can sponsor a wreath by making a $15 donation to Wreaths Across America, of which $5 is returned to the donor's organization. In 2007, the first year the nonprofit was launched, it reported about $1 million in revenue from the wreaths and in 2011, the figure had risen to $3.3 million.

On Dec. 15, 2012, at a special ceremony attended by dignitaries and families of veterans, Wreaths Across America volunteers laid down the organization's one-millionth wreath at Arlington National Cemetery. The event was videotaped for the military news website Stripes, in which a Stripes reporter interviewed Georganne Siercks, widow of Army 1st Sgt. Billy Joe Siercks, a career soldier from Missouri who served in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan before dying from wounds suffered during combat in Logar, Afghanistan in 2011. Siercks, 32, was reportedly herding younger soldiers to shelter during a mortar attack when he sustained severe injuries from shrapnel. His widow was deeply moved by the donated wreath from the Maine nonprofit.

“To see this many people out there, that they're not forgotten, no matter what, [that] even when I'm gone I know there will still be people out there coming to see him means a lot,” she told a Stripes reporter.

It is the emotion of these kinds of stories that make Karen and Morrill feel the need to help others honor and remember fallen veterans. That's why they've opened a small museum in Washington County for those who want to visit, and veterans trickle in to visit and to lay their dog tags on the boughs of balsam tips destined to adorn soldiers' graves.

“We're very much driven by those families,” Karen says. “It's a responsibility now.”