Evidence of taking our servicemen for granted can be seen by the article about exhuming the bodies of 388 Americans sailors and marines from the USS Oklahoma who could never be identified that were killed in the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in an unprecedented bid to identify troops using DNA testing. This article came out in April. Did you hear about it on any of our news programs? I didn’t. I have included the link here for you to view in case you didn’t see my post on my personal Facebook page, the Chapter Regent’s Club Facebook page, and the SCDAR Facebook page.
Did you know that Memorial Day began as Decoration Day
and had its beginnings as early as 1866?
I went to the Dept. of Veteran Affairs website, and copied/pasted the
history for you to read to learn how Memorial Day got started.
Memorial Day History
Three years after
the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868, the head of an organization of Union
veterans — 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. Maj. Gen. John A. Logan declared that
Decoration Day should be observed on May 30. It is believed that date was chosen because
flowers would be in bloom all over the country.
The first large
observance was held that year at Arlington National Cemetery, across the
Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The
ceremonies centered around the mourning-draped veranda of the Arlington
mansion, once the home of Gen. Robert E. Lee. Various Washington officials, including Gen.
and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant, presided over the ceremonies. 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.
Local Observances Claim To Be First Local
springtime tributes to the Civil War dead already had been held in various
places. One of the first occurred in
Columbus, MS, 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.
Today, cities in
the North and the South claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day in 1866. Both Macon and Columbus, GA claim the title as
well as Richmond, Va. The village of
Boalsburg, PA claims it began there two years earlier. A stone in a Carbondale, IL cemetery carries
the statement that the first Decoration Day ceremony took place there on April
29, 1866. Carbondale was the wartime
home of Gen. Logan. Approximately 25 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.
Official Birthplace Declared In 1966, Congress
and President Lyndon Johnson declared Waterloo, N.Y., the “birthplace” of
Memorial Day. There, a ceremony on May
5, 1866, honored local veterans 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, and 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.
Just what did Decoration Day mean Gen. Logan’s order for his posts to decorate graves in 1868 “with the
choicest flowers of springtime” urged: “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.”
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.
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 1.1
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.”
To ensure the
sacrifices of America ’s fallen heroes are never forgotten, in December 2000,
the U.S. Congress passed and the president signed into law “The National Moment
of Remembrance Act,” P.L. 106-579, creating the White House Commission on the
National Moment of Remembrance. The commission’s charter is to “encourage the
people of the United States to give something back to their country, which
provides them so much freedom and opportunity” by encouraging and coordinating
commemorations in the United States of Memorial Day and the National Moment of
Remembrance.
The National
Moment of Remembrance encourages all Americans to pause wherever they are at 3 P.M.
local time on Memorial Day for a minute of silence to remember and honor those
who have died in service to the nation. As Moment of Remembrance founder
Carmella LaSpada states: “It’s a way we can all help put the memorial back in
Memorial Day.”
SPECIAL SERVICE for
MEMORIAL DAY
For those of
you who live near Clemson, SC, I also want to share information about a service
on Sunday afternoon honoring Memorial Day at the Memorial Scroll of Honor on
the campus of Clemson University on Sunday afternoon at 4:00. In
addition to a wonderful program for Memorial Day, four more names from World
War 1 will be added to the scroll. In
the near future, I will do a blog about the Memorial Scroll of Honor. Even though it is not a DAR project, it is
very personal to me, and as a result, I will be posting information about it on
my personal Facebook page. Facebook will
not allow me to do a full description; therefore, I will put that information on
the blog and the other information on Facebook.
Here is the
link to the information about the special day. This will take a moment to load.
https://cualumni.clemson.edu/document.doc?id=6658
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