Memorial Day, Monday, May 30, 2016

Dear Friends & Neighbors,

Memorial Day image

(Please click on red links & note magenta)

 Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the United States for remembering the people who died while serving in the country’s armed forces. The holiday, which is observed every year on the last Monday of May (in year 2016, it is Monday, May 30, 2016)originated as Decoration Day after the American Civil War in 1868, when the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union veterans founded in Decatur, Illinois, established it as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the Union war dead with flowers. By the 20th century, competing Union and Confederate holiday traditions, celebrated on different days, had merged, and Memorial Day eventually extended to honor all Americans who died while in the military service. It marks the start of the unofficial summer vacation season, while Labor Day marks its end.

Many people visit cemeteries and memorials, particularly to honor those who have died in military service. Many volunteers place an American flag on each grave in national cemeteries.

Memorial Graves_at_Arlington_on_Memorial_Day (Attrib: Remember , public domain)

On Decoration Day, Political cartoon c 1900 by John T. McCutcheon. Caption, “You bet I’m goin’ to be a soldier, too, like my Uncle David, when I grow up.”

Annual Decoration Days

Memorial Day-1870 DecorationDayStPaulMN(photo credit: CharlesZimmerman, public domain)

for particular cemeteries are held on a Sunday in late spring or early summer in some rural areas of the American South, notably in the mountain areas. In cases involving a family graveyard where remote ancestors as well as those who were deceased more recently are buried, this may take on the character of an extended family reunion to which some people travel hundreds of miles. People gather on the designated day and put flowers on graves and renew contacts with relatives and others. There often is a religious service and a picnic-like “dinner on the grounds,” the traditional term for a potluck meal at a church. It is believed that this practice began before the American Civil War and thus may reflect the real origin of the “memorial day” idea.

Memorial Day is not to be confused with Veterans Day; Memorial Day is a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving, while Veterans Day celebrates the service of all U.S. military veterans.

Memorial Day-Gettysburg_national_cemetery

Let’s pause for a moment on this day to think of those people who sacrificed their lives without noise or complaints, below:

• Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth. ~George Washington
• What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us. ~Helen Keller
• To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die. ~Thomas Campbell
• The flames cannot burn away the past. Thy only make the shadows leap higher.~Max Payne
• The best road to progress is freedom’s road. ~John F. Kennedy
• There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires. ~Nelson Mandela
• Expose yourself to your deepest fear;after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free. ~Jim Morrison
• Caged birds accept each other but flight is what they long for. ~Tennessee Williams
• Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. ~Ronald Reagan
• True freedom is tolerance. It gives people the right to live and think in new ways. ~John Twelve Hawks
• Freedom lies in being bold. ~Robert Frost
• The secret of happiness is freedom, the secret of freedom is courage. ~Carrie Jones
• A hero is some one who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself ~Joseph Campbell
• The patriot’s blood is the seed of Freedom’s tree. ~Thomas Campbell
• Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The greatest glory of a free-born people is to transmit that freedom to their children. ~William Havard
• The dead solder’s silence sings our national anthem. ~Aaron Kilbourn
• We come, not to mourn our dead soldiers, but to praise them. ~Francis A. Walker
• Ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country. ~John F. Kennedy
• Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it. ~Mark Twain
• There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America. ~Bill Clinton
• Four things support the world: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayer of the good, and the valor of the brave. ~Muhammad
• Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are stiffened. ~Billy Graham
• The nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave. ~Elmer Davis
• In valor there is hope. ~Publius Cornelius Tacitus
• Where liberty dwells, there is my country. ~Benjamin Franklin

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