Arlington West

By this time tomorrow, every grave at Los Angeles National Cemetery in Westwood will be adorned with a small American flag. Plain markers exist for more than 85,000 veterans and family members (plus two dogs and a smattering of widows, children and staff members buried when the cemetery served the National Soldiers Home for Disabled Soldiers and Sailors, which is a whole 'nother story.) Even so, the task of placing the flags goes fairly quickly. Starting Saturday at 7:30 a.m., Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts from all over the L.A. area will converge on the Sepulveda Boulevard grounds. After an 8 a.m. ceremony, they will fan out with flags. By 11 a.m., all but the stragglers will have gone. It's an impressive sight, and a solemn and stirring one. The sweeping lawns and century-old trees have stood in for Arlington National Cemetery in numerous movies and TV episodes, but the LANC doesn't get half the tourists that find their way to Marilyn Monroe's crypt a few blocks away. It's too bad. Deep inside the grounds, the hill where Abner Prather, a Civil War blue from the Indiana infantry, became the first burial in 1889 is a great hidden spot to absorb a little history. In 2 Days in the Valley, a suicidal Paul Mazursky looks at all the markers and observes, "There are a lot of heroes buried in this place."

Edited for clarity