Memorial Day, USA: Honor, Remembrance, and Mourning for Our Departed Vets ~ Pawprints and Purrs, Inc.

Pawprints and Purrs, Inc.
Memorial Day, USA
Don't Forget Our Veterans

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Copyright © 1997 - 2010

A Day of Honor, Remembrance, and Mourning

"We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. ... Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic."
Major General John A. Logan ~ Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), an organization of former Union soldiers and sailors

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them."
For the Fallen, Laurence Binyon

The origins of special services to honor those who die in war can be found in antiquity. The Athenian leader Pericles offered a tribute to the fallen heroes of the Peloponnesian War over 24 centuries ago that could be applied today to the 1.3 million Americans who have died in the nation's wars: "Not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions, but there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men."

Three years after the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868, the head of an organization of former Union soldiers and sailors - the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) - established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. Major General John A. Logan declared it should be May 30. The first large observance was held that year at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The cemetery already held the remains of 20,000 Union dead and several hundred Confederate dead.

The ceremonies centered around the mourning-draped veranda of the Arlington mansion, once the home of General Robert E. Lee. General and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant and other Washington officials presided. After speeches, children from the Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphan Home and members of the GAR made their way through the cemetery, strewing flowers on both Union and Confederate graves, reciting prayers and singing hymns.

The crowd attending the first Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery was approximately the same size as those that attend today's observance, about 5,000 people. Then, as now, small American flags were placed on each grave - a tradition followed at many national cemeteries today. In recent years, the custom has grown in many families to decorate the graves of all departed loved ones.

Local springtime tributes to the Civil War dead already had been held in various places since there was no Confederate government to see that the Southern dead were honored and properly buried. The majority of the Confederate soldiers weren't allowed into the national cemeteries. Throughout the South, memorial associations were formed and individual families honored their dead in their own way. Many Southern states have their own days for honoring the Confederate dead - Confederate Memorial Day:

Alabama: the fourth Monday of April
Florida: April 26
Georgia: April 26
Louisiana: June 3 (Jefferson Davis' birthday)
Mississippi: the last Monday of April
South Carolina: May 10
North Carolina: May 10
Tennessee: June 3 (Confederate Decoration Day)
Texas: January 19 (Robert E. Lee's birthday - Confederate Heroes Day)
Virginia: the last Monday in May

One of the first tributes occurred in Columbus, Mississippi, April 25, 1866, when a group of women visited a cemetery to decorate the graves of Confederate soldiers who had fallen in battle at Shiloh. Nearby were the graves of Union soldiers, neglected because they were the enemy. Disturbed at the sight of the bare graves, the women placed some of their flowers on those graves, as well.

Cities in the North and the South claimed to be the birthplace of Memorial Day in 1866. Both Macon and Columbus, Georgia claim the title, as well as Richmond, Virginia. The village of Boalsburg, Pennsylvania claims it began there two years earlier. A stone in a Carbondale, Illinois cemetery carries the statement that the first Decoration Day ceremony took place there on April 29, 1866. (Carbondale was the wartime home of General Logan.) Approximately twenty-five places have been named in connection with the origin of Memorial Day, many of them in the South where most of the war dead were buried.

In 1966, Congress and President Lyndon Johnson declared Waterloo, New York the "birthplace" of Memorial Day. There a ceremony on May 5, 1866 was reported to have honored local soldiers and sailors who had fought in the Civil War. Businesses closed and residents flew flags at half-staff. Supporters of Waterloo's claim say earlier observances in other places were either informal, not community-wide or one-time events.

By the end of the 19th century, Memorial Day ceremonies were being held on May 30 throughout the nation. State legislatures passed proclamations designating the day. The Army and Navy adopted regulations for proper observance at their facilities. It was not until after World War I, however, that the day was expanded to honor those who have died in all American wars. In 1971 Memorial Day was declared a national holiday by an act of Congress, though it is still often called Decoration Day. It was then also placed on the last Monday in May, as were some other federal holidays.

"These heroes are dead. They died for liberty - they died for us. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadow of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or storm, each in the windowless palace of rest. Earth may run red with other wars - they are at peace. In the midst of the battles, in the roar of conflicts, they found the serenity of death." ~ Author Unknown

What Is A Vet?

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye. Others may carry the evidence inside them: a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg - or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the soul's ally forged in the refinery of adversity. Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem. You can't tell a vet just by looking.

What is a vet?

He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored personnel carriers didn't run out of fuel.

He is the bar room loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel.

She - or he - is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid years in Da Nang.

He is the POW who went away one person and came back another - or didn't come back at all.

He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat - but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to watch each other's backs.

He is the parade-riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand.

He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.

He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean's sunless deep.

He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket - palsied now and aggravatingly slow - who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.

He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being - a person who offered some of his life's most vital years in the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.

He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nation ever known.

So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just lean over and say "Thank you." That's all most people need, and in most cases it will mean more than any medals they could have been awarded or were awarded.

Two little words that mean a lot: Thank you.

~ Author Unknown ~

It is the soldier, not the reporter,
who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet,
who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier, not the campus organizer,
who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, not the lawyer,
who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the soldier, who salutes the flag,
who serves under the flag,
and whose coffin is draped by the flag,
who allows the protester to burn the flag.
~ Author Unknown ~

The Patriot's Poem

A protest raged on a courthouse lawn
Round a makeshift stage, they charged on,
Fifteen hundred or more, they say
Had come to burn a flag that day.

A boy held up the folded flag,
Cursed it and called it a dirty rag.
An old man pushed through the angry crowd,
With a rusty shotgun shouldered proud.
His uniform jacket was old and tight,
He had polished each button, shiny and bright.

He crossed that stage with a soldier's grace,
Until he and the boy stood face to face.
"Freedom of Speech," the old man said,
"Is worth dying for, good men are dead."

"So you can stand on this courthouse lawn,
And talk us down from dusk til dawn.
But before any Flag gets burned today,
This old man is going to have his say."

"My father died on a foreign shore,
In a war they said would end all wars.
But Tommy and I wasn't even full grown,
Before we fought in a war of our own."

"And Tommy died on Iwo Jima's beach,
In the shadow of a hill he couldn't quite reach.
Where five good men raised this Flag so high,
That the whole damn world could see it fly."

"I got this bum leg that I still drag,
Fighting for that same old Flag.
Now there's but one shot in this old gun,
So now it's time to decide which one,
Which one of you will follow our lead,
To stand and die for what you believe?
For as sure as there is a rising sun,
You'll burn in hell 'fore this Flag burns, son."

Now this riot never came to pass,
The crowd got quiet and that can of gas,
Got set aside as they walked away
To talk about what they had heard this day.

And the boy who had called it a "dirty rag,"
Handed the old soldier the folded Flag.
So the battle of the Flag this day was won,
By a tired old soldier with a rusty gun,
Who for one last time, had to show to some,
THIS FLAG MAY FADE, YET THESE COLORS DON'T RUN.
~ D. E. Shanklin ~
Page URL: http://www.sniksnak.com/usa/memorialday.html

Resources:
1. Brochure provided by:
   Memorial Hall Foundation
   Confederate Civil War Museum
   929 Camp St. New Orleans, LA 70130
   Phone: (504) 523-4522
   Fax: (504) 523-8595 fax
2. History Channel
3. Southern Politics in State and Nation; Key, V.O., Jr.