The Real Memorial Day

Thursday, May 30, 2013

“On what rests the hope of the republic? One country, one language, one flag!”

- Alexander Henry 

Today is a special day for two reasons, one it is my birthday and two, it is the real Memorial Day, or as it was first observed in 1868 then known as "Decoration Day." When I was growing up my mother would always tell me I was born on Memorial Day however, every year Memorial Day would fall on a different day. This would confuse me and my mother could never explain to me why Memorial Day did not always fall on May 30th. When I got older, I started doing some research on the origin of Memorial Day and the truth proved to be very interesting.

The work of honoring dead soldiers goes back as far as our earliest civilizations. When ancient Athens was caught in its deadly Peloponnesian Wars, for example, Pericles encouraged citizens never to forget those who had died in battle.  Their noble courage, he said, was “graven not [just] in stone but in the hearts of men.”

Centuries later, as the United States was just coming through the Civil War, Americans found themselves grieving as deeply as any of their ancient ancestors. Having expected a short skirmish, our nation instead fought a four-year war that remains the single most deadly in American history. Historians estimate that 620,000 soldiers died in the Civil War, a number that surpasses U.S. losses in World War I (115,000 dead) and World War II (318,000) combined. These losses were all the more heartbreaking because it was not uncommon for families to have sons or cousins fighting on opposite sides.  Moreover, when they did fall on the battlefield, it could take weeks and months to locate the dead and bury them properly. Therefore, wrote General John A. Logan in 1868, by the end of the war, soldiers had been buried “in almost every city, village, and hamlet church-yard in the land.”  How would the nation grieve properly, and heal? A powerful custom arose among women and families in towns across the country: honoring the graves of the fallen. 

Decoration Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war). It is now celebrated in almost every State on the last Monday in May (passed by Congress with the National Holiday Act of 1971 to ensure a three day weekend for Federal holidays), though several southern states have an additional separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead: January 19 in Texas, April 26 in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; May 10 in South Carolina; and June 3 (Jefferson Davis' birthday) in Louisiana and Tennessee. After World War I, which officially ended in 1919, Decoration Day was expanded to honor all military personnel who had died during any war or military action in which the United States had been involved. It was after this time that Decoration Day began to be known as Memorial Day however, it was not until 1967 that President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the legislation officially renaming the holiday as Memorial Day.

Memorial Day is an official day off work, it is also a time of official ceremony. At Arlington Cemetery, for example, which began in 1864 and today holds more than 260,000 military graves, over a thousand 3rd US Infantry troops will place American flags on more than 260,000 graves, and will maintain a 24 hour honor patrol through the long weekend. Since 1951, to name just one example, Boy Scouts in St. Louis, Missouri, have decorated military graves at the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery; since 1998, more than 15,000 military graves at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania have been marked by candles, again thanks to the efforts of local boy and girl Scouts. Still, in recent years, organizations such as Veterans of Foreign Wars have become concerned that the central meaning of Memorial Day may still not be reaching all Americans. In a 2002 address, the organization complained that “changing the date merely to create three day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day.” 

So as you can see, my mother was right after all. I was in fact born on the real Memorial Day, or at least on the first day it was observed as such, way back in 1868. I find it interesting that I have a love for history and all this time I was born on a historical day that remembers the same heroes that I now serve with in the United States Marine Corps. To everyone who has ever served with honor and paid the ultimate price for freedom in defense of our great nation, I salute you today and always! 

Bryan J. Alberts

Merchant, David. Memorial Day History. April 4, 2008. http://www.usmemorialday.org/backgrnd.html (accessed May 30, 2013).

Williams, Julie. The Real Meaning of Memorial Day. http://www.education.com/magazine/article/The_Real_Meaning_of_Memorial_Day/ (accessed May 30, 2013).