Memorial Day 2022

by Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

Memorial Day is observed on the last Monday in the Month of May honoring and remembering those who died while serving in the U.S. Military.  The Day was originally known as Decoration Day, on which the graves of the fallen from the War Between the States in various towns and cities were decorated with flowers and flags and visitors to the cemeteries recited prayers during the springtime tributes.  In 1966 the federal government declared the 1866 celebration in Waterloo, New York to be the first, though nobody knows for sure, and May 5, 1868 General John Logan of an organization of Northern Civil War Veterans called for a countrywide designation of the 30^th of May for the purpose of placing flowers and flags on the graves of those who died in the War Between the States.

On the first Decoration Day General James Garfield spoke at the Arlington National Cemetery where 5,000 people decorated the graves of the 20,000 War Between the States soldiers buried there.

By 1890 Decoration Day spread throughout the northern states.  In the South the date for honoring the dead varied from State to State.

After World War I all of the States celebrated Decoration Day on May 30, and with the addition of more wars and more graves the day became known as Memorial Day.  In 1968 Congress moved the day from May 30 to the final Monday in May and in 1971 declared it an official federal holiday.

The Revolutionary War veterans had their own memorials emerge.  The Continental Congress authorized the first national Revolutionary War memorial in honor of Brigadier General Richard Montgomery, who died during an assault on December 31, 1775.  The memorial was completed in 1778, and intended to be placed at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, but instead was sent by Congress to New York City where, in 1788 it was installed beneath the portico of St. Paul’s Chapel, which served as George Washington’s church during his time in New York as President in 1789.  The memorial remains on that site to this day.  The body of General Montgomery was moved to St. Paul’s in 1818.

Eleven veterans of the American Revolutionary War are buried at the Arlington National Cemetery, though they died after the end of the war.  In 1905 the remains of 14 unknown soldiers from the War of 1812 were also reinterred at the cemetery in Arlington.

John Adams had his own version of Memorial Day which he described in a letter to his Wife Abigail on April 13, 1777.  “I have spent an hour,” he wrote, “this morning in the congregation of the dead.  I took a walk into the potter’s field, a burying ground between the new stone prison and the hospital, and I never in my whole life was affected with so much melancholy.”  A local told Adams that 2,000 soldiers had been buried in the cemetery.  About 6,800 men were killed in action for the cause of American independence.  Another 17,000 soldiers died of disease during the war.  A tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary War Soldier stands at Potter’s Field where Adams had spent his day in 1777 honoring the dead.  The memorial was created 14 years before Memorial Day became an official holiday.  The plaque at the memorial behind the tomb reads, “Freedom is a light for which many men have died in darkness.”

As for my personal family history, all of my ancestors who fought in war came home alive.  Veterans from the French and Indian War, Revolutionary War, War of 1812, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, and the conflicts in the Middle East dot the landscape of my family history both past and present.  I, myself, served in the United States Navy but during peacetime, only experiencing three scuffles with the enemy, twice with the Soviet Union, and once with Iranian gun boats.  My Grandfather is buried at the Riverside National Cemetery.  He served in the Army-Air Corps in World War II.  He was in Europe, having volunteered immediately after Pearl Harbor.  While mostly in France, he was once shot down over Italy and survived to tell the tale of working his way across the landscape back to friendly territory.  All my life he rode a Greyhound bus.  After being shot down he was not much fond of flying, anymore.

I visit his grave when I can, and spend time with him on Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day each year.

Remember, Memorial Day is not Veteran’s Day.  While veterans like myself appreciate the thank yous we receive for our service, the true meaning of Memorial Day is that we honor and remember those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for liberty.  They paid with their life for the freedoms of people they had never met, and were likely more than willing to do so.  For them I provide a respectful thank you, and a prayer from the deepest depths of my soul because I know that a thank you is great, but in truth no words can convey the gratitude I truly feel, and is deserved, for these great men who laid down their lives in the name of liberty.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary