MINOT – Each May for the past six years, Eda Tripp, tiny flags in hand, has sought out local grave sites of 150 veterans who served in the country’s armed services from the days of the Revolution clear to the present.

“The Legion used to put out the flags, but their number started dwindling and then the state passed a law making towns responsible for veterans’ grave sites,” Tripp said.

In 1999, the year Tripp was elected to Minot’s board of selectmen, the Legislature made municipalities responsible for mowing veterans’ graves, securing gravestones, providing flags and making sure they were installed for Memorial Day.

“It’s interesting going to all the old cemeteries. You see a lot of old names that have come down with the history of Minot,” Tripp said.

Some of those names are preserved as place names: Samuel Shaw, veteran of the Revolutionary War, lies in Center Minot cemetery, not far from the end of Shaw Hill Road. Lt. Isaiah Woodman, also of the Revolutionary War, is now in the Woodman Cemetery on Woodman Hill Road.

Others are names still found in town: Pvt. Manasseh Washburn, who served in Turner’s Massachusetts Regiment during the Revolution and William A. Bridgham, with Company 1 of the Maine Infantry who fought in the Spanish-American war.

And in the Campbell cemetery off Goodwin Road lie William Campbell, who served in Parcy’s Company of Reed’s Massachusetts Militia during the war of 1812, and, Tripp figures, his descendent, W.A. Campbell, who served in Company K, 5th Maine Infantry, during the Civil War.

“I’m amazed at the numbers who were in the war of 1812,” she said.

It usually takes Tripp three days to a week to get all the flags out, depending on the weather. This year, after a week of rain, Tripp found herself feeling unwell. She turned to Arlan Saunders and the town highway crew for assistance. They finished placing the flags this week.

Tripp has yet to visit all of the town’s 29 cemeteries – which range in size from the Brown Cemetery with only one stone to Riverside Cemetery with 140 lots. There are two she hasn’t found yet.

“I go to the 20 that I know have veterans and I have found most of the stones, but I don’t know which are the right grave sites in the Harlow Cemetery, so I usually set two flags by the gate. At all the others, I place the flags by the stones,” she said.

But sun or rain, and no matter the black flies and mosquitoes, she considers the duty an honor.

“I was a young girl during World War II. All of my uncles were in the service; one didn’t come home in good shape. I’ve always appreciated what our veterans have done for us,” she said.