Two names will be added to the Philadelphia Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall (PVMM) for the first time in 13 years this Memorial Day.
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President Lyndon Johnson and Congress officially declared Waterloo, N.Y.as the birthplace of Memorial Day in 1966. The public ceremony will include a Black Hawk helicopter flyover and reading of the 217 names inscribed on the monument, which represent the Idaho residents who died in Vietnam between 1961 and 1975. It is time for us to transform Memorial Day back to General Logan’s vision of 150 year ago – from a day marked by 20% off sales, a backyard cookout, a trip to the beach and a perfunctory display of the Stars and Stripes to one with deep and profound meaning in which all Americans are involved. At Charleston’s former horse track and jockey club, converted during the war into a prison camp, 28 black men removed the bodies of 257 Union soldiers from a mass grave, gave them a proper burial and fenced in the new cemetery, according to Yale historian David W. Blight. Especially through the anxious first decade after Appomattox, Decoration Day became an opportunity for Union veterans to voice their insight that if “crushed”, the rebellion was “not dead”. And we have lots of people to honor today.
From Dorchester, Massachusetts, to Bunker Hill, Illinois-from Brimfield, Ohio, to Vallejo, California-veterans placed wreaths and planted flags, delivered speeches and rehearsed original odes.
Kylie Cartwright ran ahead of her mother Julie, pulling tattered American flags from the ground around military veterans’ gravesites in Highland Memorial Gardens on Saturday morning.
The crowd attending the first Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery was approximately the same size as those that attend today’s observance, about 5,000 people. These certificates are later collected by the National Park Service, which maintains the memorial, and stored in a permanent archive. After World War I, the holiday was changed to honor Americans who died fighting in all wars. The VAVS also places flags on veterans’ graves on Memorial Day.
General Logan’s order for his posts to decorate graves in 1868 “with the choicest flowers of springtime” urged: “We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance”. He set aside May 30, 1868, and called it Decoration Day.
Indeed, the National Moment of Remembrance is 3 p.m. local time on Memorial Day.
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“We also owe it to those courageous souls to uphold the values they fought for”.
