Traditional observance of Memorial day has diminished over the years. Many Americans nowadays have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored, neglected. Most people no longer remember the proper flag etiquette for the day. While there are towns and cities that still hold Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some people think the day is for honoring any and all dead, and not just those fallen in service to our country.
There are a few notable exceptions. Since the late 50’s on the Thursday before Memorial Day, the 1,200 soldiers of the 3d U.S. Infantry place small American flags at each of the more than 260,000 gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They then patrol 24 hours a day during the weekend to ensure that each flag remains standing. In 1951, the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts of St. Louis began placing flags on the 150,000 graves at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery as an annual Good Turn, a practice that continues to this day. More recently, beginning in 1998, on the Saturday before the observed day for Memorial Day, the Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts place a candle at each of approximately 15,300 grave sites of soldiers buried at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park on Marye’s Heights (the Luminaria Program). And in 2004, Washington D.C. held its first Memorial Day parade in over 60 years.
A single Memorial Day parade clings in my memory from a time I was about 4. The home in which I grew up, and where my family still lives, was just a handful of yards away from the cemetery, destination of the annual parade. Standing there with my father, twice the sole survivor of the sinking of his destroyers in WWII, we saw the parade stop while someone was assisted out of a car and shuffled to the head of the parade for the last 100 or so feet to the ceremony site.
My father muttered “Oh, my God!” and told me to look well and remember well for very few people would ever see such a thing again. The incredibly old man wore a dusty blue uniform and what I then thought was just a tattered old hat, for was one of the very few remaining Union veterans.
Someday, in the mid-2030s, I hope another small boy has a similar chance for at least a brief introduction to a veteran from WWII, and that as it has for me, it will stick with him his entire life.
Wow, what a great story Bart.
Wow!
Kendall, thank you for publishing this. It’s important to remind us, lest anyone forget. God rest the souls of our fallen defenders. And may God bless all our veterans in all corners of the earth. They fought, and fight, to keep us free. Amen.