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Veterans prepare Mountview Cemetery for Memorial Day

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Mountview Cemetery in Billings recorded a virtual Memorial Day ceremony on Saturday.

The Friends of the Yellowstone National Cemetery shot the video for Monday, according to the group's chair Bill Kennedy.

American Legion Post Four used proper distancing and put flags on veterans graves.

The number of helpers was down this year due to virus concerns, since some may be in the high-risk category.

Disabled American Veterans Chapter 10 had a wreath ceremony to also help replace the traditional ceremony.

"It's important to do the best we can and be the safest we can," said Chris Waite, city of Billings cemetery/parks supervisor. "We recognize that unfortunately having a pre-recorded event isn't as great as having a live event but we did want to make sure we could everything we could to honor our veterans. We're hoping we can reach every veteran's grave this year. We might have a little bit of reduced capability because of some of the limitations So if families notice that one of their veterans didn't receive a flag, we have them at our office and we're more than happy to hand them out to people who may not have received one this year due to our smaller capacity and being able to reach everyone."

The Mountview virtual ceremony will be available on the city of Billings website on Monday.