Today is Memorial Day.
The origins of Memorial Day go back to the end of America’s Civil War, the deadliest war in American history. In that four-year conflict, more than 622,000 Americans died, more than died in World War I and World War II combined.
By the late 1860s, countless towns and cities across America launched springtime tributes at the graves of fallen soldiers from both sides of the Civil War.
These tributes were often community-wide events during which businesses closed, residents decorated the graves with flowers and flags and recited prayers to honor and remember the fallen.
The historical practice of placing flowers on the graves of the fallen led these events to be widely referred to as “Decoration Day.”
June Wandrey
The first national observance of what is now called Memorial Day occurred on May 30, 1868, in the Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC. The speaker was civil war veteran James A. Garfield, then a member of Congress and a future president.
In 1938, Congress officially approved Memorial Day as a federal holiday.
From 1868 until 1970 Memorial Day was observed annually on May 30. That date was selected because it was not connected to any battle or end date of any war.
Over the years, the scope of Memorial Day was expanded to honor and remember all the members of the United States military who died in World War I and World War II. Korean War, Vietnam War, Operation Desert Storm, the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.
In 1971, Congress decided Memorial Day should be observed annually on the last Monday in May.
Sadly, since then, Memorial Day has largely been replaced by far too many Americans from being a solemn day of remembrance to being the third day of a long holiday weekend.
It is characterized as the unofficial start of the summer vacation season, trips to the ocean, family picnics, and retailers holding sales events.
It is time to restore Memorial Day to what it was intended to be.
It is a time to reflect upon stories like the one below by June Wandrey Mann.
I discovered it two years ago and featured it then in a Spy Letter to the Editor.
It merits repeating.
June Mann served as a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War II.
Between 1942 to 1946, she served in Africa, Sicily, Italy, France, and Germany.
In her post war book — Bedpan Commando — she wrote about her experiences. In it she wrote “Working in the shock wards, giving transfusions, was a rewarding, but sad experience. Many wounded soldiers’ faces still haunt my memory.”
Her recollection of one experience in August 1943 while serving in Sicily is especially heartbreaking.
“An eighteen-year-old boy is carried into the shock ward, and he looks up at me trustingly asking, ‘How am I doing, nurse?’ I just kiss his forehead and say, ‘You are doing just fine, soldier.’ He smiles sweetly and says, ‘I was just checking,’ Then he dies. We all cry in private. But not in front of the boys. Never in front of the boys.”
With all due respect to Nurse Mann who was a member of the “greatest generation,” I suggest that at least once on every Memorial Day weekend, it is not only OK, but very appropriate to cry … in private, in front of others, or do both.
We should do so in remembrance of all American military veterans who, as Abraham Lincoln observed in his Gettysburg Address, “gave the last full measure of devotion.”
David Reel is a Public affairs and public relations consultant who lives in Easton.
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