Memorial Day Chrysanthemums are  now on sale at my local grocery store. It seems like the day after Mother’s Day, retailers stock their shelves with potted plants or, silk and plastic flowers and wreaths suitable for placing on the graves of loved ones. But the original meaning of the holiday, to honor those American men and women who died during combat.has become somewhat lost over the years.

The holiday, was established in 1866 following the Civil War, when General John A. Logan, commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic,  called for a holiday commemorating fallen soldiers to be observed every May 30. It was first known as Decoration Day and was set aside to remember both Union and Confederate soldiers alike. Soldiers would decorate the graves of their fallen comrades with flowers, flags and wreaths. Memorial Day became the official title in the 1880’s, but didn’t legally become Memorial Day until 1967, when Lyndon B. Johnson was President of the United States.

 

In 1971,  Memorial Day was moved to the last Monday of May, so that we could have a long weekend. The Uniform Monday Holiday Act since then has also applied to our national observances of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, President’s Day, Labor Day and Columbus Day, but not Veteran’s Day, which will always be observed on November 11th. As a side note, it was originally called Armistice Day and honored the official end of World War 1 in 1918.

 

After World War I, Memorial Day commemorations honored not just the Civil War dead but soldiers who had died in all American conflicts.

At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington, Virginia, the President or Vice President of the United States gives a speech honoring the contributions of the dead and lay a wreath.

Each year the 3rd U.S. Infantry places a small American flag before the gravestones and niches of service members buried at Arlington National Cemetary (and the U.S. Soldier’s and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery) just before Memorial Day weekend.

The soldiers put flags in front of more than 260,000 gravestones and about 7,300 niches at Arlington. (Another 13,500 flags are placed at the Soldier’s and Airmen’s Cemetery.) It takes them about three hours to place them all, and then they stay at Arlington during the Memorial Day weekend to make sure the flags remain at each gravestone. I admire this  respectful and honorable practice.

When I was a kid growing up in the northern New Mexico community of Taos, I attended Taos Elementary School. Physical Education, PE  Day came once a week, and since the school didn’t have it’s own gymnasium, my class would walk to the Bataan National Guard Armory and use the gym there. The enormous olive green army vehicles parked in the connecting garage  fascinated me.

It would be several decades later while interviewing my mom  about her childhood and extended family that I learned about our two cousins who died while serving during World War 2. She mentioned that  cousin Moises Miera died as a prisoner during the Bataan Death march, and that another cousin, Manuel Jaime Garcia had died a few weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and was listed as missing in action. My interview with her was more than 20 years ago.

It took me a few more years to make the connection that the National Guard Armory, which later was sold to the town of Taos and made into a convention center, was named after the soldiers of the 200th Coast Artillery Battery H of the New Mexico National Guard who were deployed to the Phillipines in 1941 a few months before the Japanese bombs flew into the Pearl Harbor naval base on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. They were among the first Americans to engage in combat with the Japanese armed forces.

I hadn’t studied the inscriptions below the memorial cross that had st...