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Posted May 25, 2001

Remembering the Fallen

This Monday is Memorial Day, the time we remember all those who served in all the wars America has fought. While the day is a celebration of our freedom, its history and its observance have not always been without conflict.

I so well remember Memorial Day as a child, when we all joined together to decorate our bicycles and wagons with colorful paper, signs and flags, and our parents made us paper soldier hats to wear.

This circus of colorful bikes, flags, dogs with red, white and blue bunting wrapped around them, and dozens of children pulling wagons, riding their bikes, or just walking would parade up and down neighborhood streets. It was much fun, but I'm not sure we all knew what Memorial Day was about.

The meaning didn't really come to me until one Memorial Day I went to my grandfather's grave with my grandmother. My grandfather did not die in a war, but many families took Memorial Day as a chance to flush out winter's gloom and put in new spring flowers.

Many of the graves were decorated with a simple, single flag, in honor of those men and women who had died in war. My grandmother took this time to tell her young grandson about the flags, about war, about valor and about sacrifice. It was a simple lesson from a plain-spoken woman.

According to the Centennial Celebration, a souvenir edition of the Geneva (N.Y.) Times, printed on May 24, 1966, it was in 1865 when Henry C. Welles, a druggist in the village of Waterloo, N.Y., mentioned at a social gathering that honor should be shown to the patriotic dead of the Civil War by decorating their graves. In the spring of 1866, he again mentioned this subject to General John B. Murray, the Seneca County (N.Y.) clerk.

General Murray embraced the idea and a committee was formed to plan a day devoted to honoring the dead. Townspeople adopted the idea wholeheartedly. Wreaths, crosses and bouquets were made for each veteran's grave. The village was decorated with flags at half staff and draped with evergreen boughs and mourning black streamers.

On May 5, 1866, civic groups joined the procession to the three existing cemeteries and were led by veterans marching to music. At each cemetery there were impressive and lengthy services including speeches, color guards and music.

The event was proclaimed official on May 5, 1868, by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. The holiday was first observed on May 30, 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

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, although several southern states have an additional, separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead: Jan. 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.

On Monday at 10 a.m. in Herndon, a celebration will be held in honor of Memorial Day in Chestnut Grove Cemetery on Dranesville Road. The annual event is sponsored by American Legion Post 184, which is based in Herndon.

Herndon Town Manager and veteran John E. Moore will deliver the keynote address, and the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps from South Lakes and Herndon high schools will provide a combined color guard. Moore, along with post commander Hardy Cofield, will place a wreath on a veteran's grave to commemorate all war veterans.

It's a good time to remember all who died for our freedom. Be there.

And that's Our Town this week.