May 30, 2011
BRUCE A. BRENNAN BLOG FROM THE WORLD AND MY MIND
The news as I see it and the views as I want them.
May 30 is … My Bucket's Got A Hole in It Day, bummer.
Memorial Day bought and paid for by the United States Military since 1776. Thank a Veteran today.
Memorial Day, it should be more important than it is. It has become the unofficial beginning of summer, a day for picnics, baseball, and golf and parties unless you are in the military stationed at Arlington National Cemetery. In a stirring tribute to mark Memorial Day each year, all available soldiers of the elite 3rd U.S. Infantry (known as The Old Guard) gather at Arlington National Cemetery to perform a special task. Just before the Memorial Day weekend, they place American flags, one foot and centered, in front of the gravestones and columbarium niches of every service member buried or inurned at Arlington Cemetery.
This tradition of honor, known as Flags-in, has taken place ever since 1948 when The Old Guard was appointed as the ceremonial unit for the U.S. Army. During the Memorial Day weekend, members of The Old Guard patrol the cemetery to make sure each gravesite remains decorated and honored with a flag. In addition, sentinels for the Tomb of the Unknowns place flags at each of the unknown servicemen graves.
The flags are removed after the three-day weekend.
Today, please remember the Minutemen; the Militia; the Army; the Cavalry; the Navy; the Marines;; the Merchant Marines; the Color Guard; the Civil War soldier; the World War I soldier; the Air Force; the World War II soldier; the Korean War soldier; the Vietnam soldier, like my cousin, Paul Woolford from Streator, IL who was killed in Vietnam on November 10, 1969 at the age of 23. He left a young widow. Remember the soldiers in the Cold War; Grenada; the first Gulf War; the Battle of Mogadishu; the current Gulf War; Afghanistan and every other place or conflict an American has died being an American.
This web site gives everything to you. It is spiritual but not in your face.
Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation's service. There are many stories as to its actual beginnings, with over two dozen cities and towns laying claim to being the birthplace of Memorial Day. There is also evidence that organized women's groups in the South were decorating graves before the end of the Civil War: a hymn published in 1867, "Kneel Where Our Loves are Sleeping" by Nella L. Sweet carried the dedication "To The Ladies of the South who are Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead" (Source: Duke University's Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920). While Waterloo N.Y. was officially declared the birthplace of Memorial Day by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966, it's difficult to prove conclusively the origins of the day. It is more likely that it had many separate beginnings; each of those towns and every planned or spontaneous gathering of people to honor the war dead in the 1860's tapped into the general human need to honor our dead, each contributed honorably to the growing movement that culminated in Gen Logan giving his official proclamation in 1868. It is not important who was the very first, what is important is that Memorial Day was established. Memorial Day is not about division. It is about reconciliation; it is about coming together to honor those who gave their all.
Memorial 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 (P.L. 90 - 363) 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. In 1915, inspired by the poem “In Flanders Fields” Moina Michael replied with her own poem:
We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies. |
She then conceived of an idea to wear red poppies on Memorial Day in honor of those who died serving the nation during war. She was the first to wear one, and sold poppies to her friends and co-workers with the money going to benefit servicemen in need. Later a Madam Guerin from France was visiting the United States and learned of this new custom started by Ms. Michael and when she returned to France, made artificial red poppies to raise money for war orphaned children and widowed women. This tradition spread to other countries. In 1921, the Franco-American Children's League sold poppies nationally to benefit war orphans of France and Belgium. The League disbanded a year later and Madam Guerin approached the VFW for help. Shortly before Memorial Day in 1922 the VFW became the first veterans' organization to nationally sell poppies. Two years later their “Buddy” Poppy program was selling artificial poppies made by disabled veterans. In 1948 the US Post Office honored Ms Michael for her role in founding the National Poppy movement by issuing a red 3 cent postage stamp with her likeness on it.
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. In 2004, Washington D.C. held its first Memorial Day parade in over 60 years.
To help re-educate and remind Americans of the true meaning of Memorial Day, the “National Moment of Remembrance” resolution was passed on Dec 2000 which asks that at 3 p.m. local time, for all Americans "To voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a Moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to “Taps."
Reprinted from Arlington National Cemetery site:
On any weekday at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, a military ritual occurs that is both familiar and moving. An escort of honor comes to attention and presents arms. A firing party then fires three volleys. After the briefest of moments, a bugler sounds the twenty-four notes we know of as Taps. The flag, held by members of the military honor guard, is then folded into a triangle reminiscent of the cocked hat from the American Revolution. This ceremony is performed almost twenty times daily during the many funerals held at Arlington. This ritual is also used for the thousands of Memorial Day ceremonies held throughout the United States during events held to remember those Americans who have served our country. As one travels through Arlington the history of our country can literally be read on the quarter million stones.
Arlington and the tradition of Memorial Day were born out of ironies perhaps we might even consider them as tragic or dramatic as in a Greek or Shakespearean irony.
Irony-The famous home at Arlington was located on the land of a Confederate General whose wife’s grandfather served as president of the United States.
Irony-The land was ordered for military use by a general who so hated that Confederate general that he ordered graves dug in the rose garden so that house could no longer be habitable.
Irony-The tradition of decorations on graves started in the south, then considered an enemy country.
And it is a bitter irony that the day of remembrance has almost faded into a weekend of picnics, shopping sprees, and beach vacations. Too many don’t know what the day stands for.
Between 1861 and 1865 our country sorted out whether it could survive as one or two separate nations. It took the tragedy of a Civil War to make us truly a “United” States.
In the spring of 1864 after some of the bloodiest battles of the war and with the Confederacy in its last desperate months, the need for more military cemeteries became a paramount issue in Washington D.C. In the days before refrigeration, and especially in the humidity of the District of Columbia, bodies had to be buried as quickly as possible.
In May 1864 Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs was ordered by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to find new and suitable burial grounds for the mounting dead. Without hesitation, Meigs ordered the grounds of the Custis-Lee mansion be turned into a cemetery.
The mansion, which had belonged to Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army, was under the control of Union forces. Meigs (a Georgia man by birth) picked the grounds not only because he felt Lee had betrayed his country by leaving it to serve the south but also because he blamed him for the death of his son who had been killed by Confederate soldiers, supposedly murdered. The interment of Union soldiers began in May. Ironically the first burial in the Union cemetery was a Confederate soldier. The grounds would go on to become Arlington National Cemetery our nations’ most hallowed ground.
No one can trace with any certainty the origin of the Memorial Day; it is well believed that the day was born with those who decorated the graves of civil war dead.
Many towns (Waterloo NY being the most prominent) have laid claim to the origin of the tradition. It may have started with women in the South. Originally it was known as Decoration Day. Towns held parades honoring the fallen, the parade routes often times ending at a local cemetery, where Decoration Day speeches were then given. People took the time that day to clean and decorate with flowers and flags the graves of those that fell in service to their country.
In May 1868 General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, issued a proclamation calling for the decoration of graves.
“Let no vandalism of avarice or 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.”- General Logan – May 5, 1868
In 1882 the day was changed to Memorial Day and to be observed May 30th.In 1971 it was moved to the last Monday in May. Ironically there are some in the south that observe the day on a different day.
Another tradition of Memorial Day is that of giving speeches, addresses or orations at gatherings. The most famous memorial oratory was the one given by Abraham Lincoln and although he gave it on November 19, 1863 it sets the model for speeches and orations of the type. The irony is that the address was not the main oration to be given that day nor expected to be a long speech. According to Gary Wills, author of “Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America,” the address uses the form of the oratory of the Greek Revival and of the funereal addresses of ancient Athens, the imagery of the nineteenth-century rural cemetery movement, the Transcendentalist thought of Unitarian minister and abolitionist Theodore Parker, and the constitutional arguments of Daniel Webster. That he did this in some 242 words is a masterpiece of our American literature.” His words are quoted every Memorial Day:
“…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion: that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; and that this nation under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
In the 145 years since the Civil War, our nation has healed its wounds and every Memorial Day pauses to remember the war dead. In that time Arlington National Cemetery and the traditions of Memorial Day have gone hand in hand. In 1912 the country was truly reunited when the Confederate monument was dedicated at Arlington and a special section was set for those who served in the Confederate Army. The cemetery which was set to honor Americans ironically today holds the remains of many foreign nationals including a German soldier from WWII.
In 1958, the Unknowns from World War II and the Korean Conflict were laid to rest on Memorial Day and in 1984 the Vietnam Unknown joined them in honored rest. Another irony is that the Unknown was identified and reburied in Missouri.
Ironically, over the years the meaning of Memorial Day has faded too much from the public consciousness. From a solemn day of mourning, remembrance, and honor to our departed loved ones, it has turned into a weekend of Bar B Q’s, shopping bargains and beaches where only token nods toward our honored dead is given, if at all.
I think Oliver Wendell Holmes, chief Justice of the Supreme Court and Civil War Veteran said it best:
“So to the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial Day is still kept up we may answer, it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiasm and faith is the condition of acting greatly”-Oliver Wendell Holmes Memorial Day address May 30, 1884
The final tradition is the bugle call
Of all the military bugle calls, none is so easily recognized or more apt to stir our emotions than the haunting and eloquent melody of Taps. The call is unique to the United States military. Taps is used at U.S. bases around the world as the final call of the day. It has given a sense of safety and security to U.S. soldiers from the Civil War on, signaling to our men and women in uniform that another day in service to their country is done and all is well.
There is a wonderful myth about the origin of Taps. During the Civil War, it says, there was a young soldier who was killed while fighting for the Confederacy. His father, a captain in the Union Army, came upon his son’s body on the battlefield. In the pocket of his son’s uniform, he found the notes for Taps. Ironically, this story will be repeated on Memorial Day.
This is a great story but it’s just that a story.
In 1862, Union General Daniel Butterfield and his brigade bugler, Oliver Willcox Norton, revised an earlier bugle call to create the 24 notes we know today as Taps. The new call quickly spread throughout the Union army and was soon used even by Confederates to signal the end of the day.
Later that same year at a battlefield funeral, Captain John Tidball chose to forgo firing the customary volleys over the grave for fear that he might rouse the enemy. The Captain chose the sounding of Taps as the most appropriate substitute.
Today, sounding Taps at ceremonies is the most sacred duty a bugler can perform. When I sound Taps at a funeral, I’m sometimes approached by family members who wish to thank me for being part of the service. To answer “You’re welcome” seems inappropriate. Instead, I always reply, “It is my honor.”
So traditions born of Irony are celebrated every Memorial Day
Just a couple of thoughts I had.
BRUCE A. BRENNAN
DEKALB, IL 60115
COPYRIGHT 2011
VISIT ANY OF THE SITES LISTED FOR REVIEW, RESEARCH, ORDERING MY WRITING PRODUCTS OR TO CONTACT ME.
Go to web sites below to buy books by Bruce A. Brennan. It is still a good time to purchase any of my books. The books are interesting and inexpensive reads. My third book should be available later this year, in late 2011. More information will be forthcoming.
Book Titles:
Holmes the Ripper
A Revengeful Mix of Short Fiction
"A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself." - Joseph Campbell
