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Memorial Day Weekend
Enjoy the long weekend, everyone…and don’t forget what Memorial Day stands for. It’s not about barbecues and sales at your favorite store. It’s about honoring and mourning the military personnel who have died in the performance of their military duties while serving in the United States Armed Forces. (Wikipedia)
Did you know?
Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day. “Originally known as Decoration Day, it originated in the years following the Civil War and became an official federal holiday in 1971.” (History.com)
Each year on Memorial Day a national moment of remembrance takes place at 3:00 p.m. local time. (History.com)
One of the earliest commemorations was organized by recently freed African Americans. Three weeks after the Confederate surrender, an unusual procession entered the former camp: On May 1, 1865, more than 1,000 people recently freed from enslavement, accompanied by regiments of the U.S. Colored Troops (including the Massachusetts 54th Infantry) and a handful of white Charlestonians, gathered in the camp to consecrate a new, proper burial site for the Union dead. The group sang hymns, gave readings and distributed flowers around the cemetery, which they dedicated to the “Martyrs of the Race Course.” (History.com)
Wearing a red poppy on Memorial Day began with a World War I poem. In the spring of 1915, bright red flowers began poking through the battle-ravaged land across northern France and Flanders (northern Belgium). Canadian Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, who served as a brigade surgeon for an Allied artillery unit, spotted a cluster of the poppies shortly after serving as a brigade surgeon during the bloody Second Battle of Ypres. The sight of the bright red flowers against the dreary backdrop of war inspired McCrae to pen the poem, "In Flanders Field," in which he gives voice to the soldiers who had been killed in battle and lay buried beneath the poppy-covered grounds. Later that year, a Georgia teacher and volunteer war worker named Moina Michael read the poem in Ladies' Home Journal and wrote her own poem, "We Shall Keep the Faith" to begin a campaign to make the poppy a symbol of tribute to all who died in war. The poppy remains a symbol of remembrance to this day. (History.com)
Image by Kevin Graham from Pixabay