Re: Memorial Day..
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: danachevroletfor1967</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I am pretty certain that Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day and came about to put flowers on the graves of those who died in the Civil War. I don't know when it was changed to Memorial Day to honor all those veterans who gave their lives serving our country; maybe after WWI or WWII? I consider it a day when I honor all veterans too, living and deceased.
On another note there is a WWII vet, age 90, that plays in our local senior softball league (for those age 50 and over). He is quite a guy and I admire him greatly. We were on the same team last season.
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Correct, started out as Decoration Day, as the graves of the Civil war dead were "Decorated with flowers.
Honorable as it might seem to thank living veterans for there service On Monday. Myself as a living veteran, I prefer to only recognize the greater sacrifice of those who gave the there lives in service [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/flag.gif[/img]. We living veterans have our own day to be remembered.
JMO Thanks Mike
Early Observances of Memorial Day
The Civil War claimed more lives than any conflict in U.S. history, requiring the establishment of the country’s first national cemeteries. By the late 1860s Americans in various towns and cities had begun holding springtime tributes to these countless fallen soldiers, decorating their graves with flowers and reciting prayers.
Decoration Day
On May 5, 1868, General John A. Logan, leader of an organization for Northern Civil War veterans, called for a nationwide day of remembrance later that month. “The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land,” he proclaimed. The date of Decoration Day, as he called it, was chosen because it wasn’t the anniversary of any particular battle.
On the first Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, and 5,000 participants decorated the graves of the 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried there. Many Northern states held similar commemorative events and reprised the tradition in subsequent years; by 1890 each one had made Decoration Day an official state holiday. Many Southern states, on the other hand, continued to honor their dead on separate days until after World War I.
Evolution of Memorial Day
Memorial Day, as Decoration Day gradually came to be known, originally honored only those lost while fighting in the Civil War. But during World War I the United States found itself embroiled in another major conflict, and the holiday evolved to commemorate American military personnel who died in all wars.
For decades, Memorial Day continued to be observed on May 30, the date Logan had selected for the first Decoration Day. But in 1968 Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May in order to create a three-day weekend for federal employees; the change went into effect in 1971. The same law also declared Memorial Day a federal holiday.
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