The U.S. Civil War claimed more lives that any other conflict in U.S. history, which required the establishment of of our nation's first national cemeteries. At the end of the Civil War, mourning families began placing flags and flowers on the graves of fallen soldiers.
The town of Waterloo, NY is where Memorial Day really began. On May 5, 1866, the citizens of Waterloo closed their shops and businesses to decorate the graves of the men killed during the Civil War. General John A. Logan called for a nationwide day of remembrance and started an effort to consolidate all the decoration services into one national holiday, designating May 30th as Decoration Day.
On the first national Decoration Day, May 30, 1868, five thousand war widows, orphans and other mourners gathered at Arlington National Ceremony and place flowers and ribbons on 20,000 graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers. Future U.S. presidents, Ulysses S. Grant and James Garfield also attended the ceremony. By the end of the century, Decoration Day had grown and was renamed Memorial Day.
America interred its first unknown soldier in Arlington National Cemetery on Armistice Day in 1921. On every Memorial Day, this soldier and other unknown soldiers are honored by a wreath-laying ceremony conducted by the President or Vice President. The unknown soldiers are reminders of all those brave Americans who never made it home from war. Memorial Day officially became a federal holiday in 1971, and Congress shifted it from May 30th to the fourth Monday in May.
One of the longest-standing traditions is the running of the Indianapolis 500, an auto race which has been held in conjunction with Memorial Day since 1911. It runs on the Sunday preceding the Memorial Day holiday.
On Memorial Day the flag of the United States is raised briskly to the top of the staff and then solemnly lowered to the half-staff position, where it remains only until noon. It is then raised to full-staff for the remainder of the day. The half-staff position remembers that more than one million men and women who gave their lives in service of their country. At noon their memory is raised by the living, who resolve not to let their sacrifice be in vain, but to rise up in their stead and continue the fight for liberty and justice for all.
During one of President Reagan's Memorial Day speeches, he said this, "And we owe them something, those boys. We owe them first a promise: That just as they did not forget their missing comrades, neither, ever, will we. And there are other promises. We must always remember that peace is a fragile thing that needs constant vigilance. We owe them a promise to look at the world with a steady gaze and, perhaps, a resigned toughness, knowing that we have adversaries in the world and challenges and the only way to meet them and maintain the peace is by staying strong."
Remember Army 2d Lt Audie Leon Murphy who won the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was born to poor sharecroppers in Kingston, TX. His father was a drunk, and his mother was the pianist at a Baptist church. Their home was an old railroad box car with no electricity or bathroom. At age five, he was working in the fields. He didn't start school until he was nine and quit after the fifth grade. By the age of 16, his mother was dead, and his father had left him. He never had a bicycle or played baseball.
In 1941, he tried to join the Marine Corps, but they turned 5 foot, 5 inch, 112 pound fair-faced boy down, because he was too small. Dejected, he decided to enter the Army who accepted him. They called him "Baby", because he didn't even shave yet. In riflery, he only scored "Marksman," below "Sharpshooter" and "Expert." The Army wanted to make him a clerk, but he forced his was into the infantry and ended up fighting the Germans in Europe.
During WWII in Holtzwihr, France on the cold day of January 26, 1945, a surprise German counterattack threatened to overrun his Company B. As his fellow-soldiers began to drop back, "Baby" Murphy rushed to a knocked-out American tank, manned the .50 caliber machine gun and opened fire on the Germans. He was surrounded by the enemy; the tank he was fighting from was in flames and in danger of exploding any moment. He singlehandedly broke the German attack. Moments after he climbed down from the tank it blew up behind him. For that gallantry he earned the Congressional Medal of Honor. He went on to win 36 other medals for gallantry which made him the most decorated soldier in U.S. Army history.
On the top of that disabled tank, he stopped the enemy's advance, he saves the lives of many Americans, he rallied his men, and all of it singlehandedly. When he radioed for artillery support and was asked how close the enemy was to his position, he said, “Wait a minute and I’ll let you speak to them.” When asked after the war why he had seized the machine gun and took on an entire company of German infantry, he simply replied, "They were killing my friends."
This year take time to remember those selfless Americans who died on the battlefield, at sea, and in the air for the freedoms you enjoy here in the United States of America, the land of the free and the home of the Brave.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.
