Swansea Scout makes sure every veteran's grave has a flag

SOMERSET - Life Scouts Troop 303 Member Demetre Baltas has always been inspired by this country’s brave veterans, and wanted to do something special to honor them.

On Saturday, Aug. 8, at Mount Hope Cemetery, Baltas with help from family and mentors, made sure “every veteran buried at the cemetery without a flag marker on their grave got one.”

When Baltas, a 16-year-old Joseph Case High School student, learned some veterans did not have flag markers, he decided to honor them

Baltas has been a member of the Life Scout Troop for five years. According to Boy Scouts of America, Life Scouts are a rank, along with Eagle Scout, that requires leadership, service hours, and merit badges. Life Scouts are expected to be role models.

The project that Baltas completed last Saturday was one of the many requirements he needs to complete to be promoted to an Eagle Scout, which is the highest rank in Boy Scouts.

Although this was his first project with the troop, he’s always had a passion for honoring the veterans. “Every Memorial Day I help [by] replacing the veterans' flags in the cemetery with the troop.”

The project on Saturday was the final result of a project that he had been working on for months. In November, Baltas went to the cemetery and updated the database for which graves had flag markers and which ones didn’t by counting every veteran’s grave in the cemetery. He then started fundraising to be able to get flag markers.

“I would like to thank the Swansea veterans agent Kevin Serpa for his generous donation in markers, as well as his assistant Jamie Bean,” Baltas said. He also received donations from American Legion Post 303, Micheal and Christine Fontaine, Eric McAdam, and Pereira Painting Co.

Thanks to the donations, Baltas was able to buy more than 200 markers for the buried veterans.

Baltas is also very thankful of the people that helped him along the way, including former Town Administrator John McAuliffe, for giving them permission to get into the cemetery; former clerk Betty Costa, who provided maps of the cemetery; and his mentor Robert Flynn, whom Baltas said “the project wouldn't be possible without.”