By Wally Wachter
MEMORIAL DAY, this year three days before its originally scheduled date, was intended as a day of patriotic ceremonies and tribute. Today, it has generally been adopted as the official start of summer, although the calendar has the season about a month away.
Barbecue grills come out of storage. Swimming pool covers are removed. Boats are hitched up to trailers. This year, because of the extra-long winter and a long wet spell that followed, home gardeners are finally getting a chance to plant their tomatoes and flower beds. Families, relatives and friends gather for reunions.
Once, Memorial Day was a single-day observance dedicated exclusively to honor the nation's war dead. Now it has become a three-day recreational weekend.
A move to provide longer holiday weekends for the fun-loving, to appease industry that wanted to avoid one-day shutdowns in the middle of the week, and to give commercial establishments an excuse for special sales has taken much of the solemnity out of Memorial Day.
Decreed by Congress several years ago, the day set aside to honor the fallen dead of all U.S. wars, now is the last Monday in May.
It always was called Decoration Day in earlier times. Flags were displayed on most front porches. On flagpoles in public places, the Stars and Stripes properly flew at half-staff until noon, then was raised to the top of the poles until sundown.
All businesses were closed for the day. Industries, likewise, paused in the interest of the occasion, giving their workers an opportunity to join in the tribute. Schools were closed even though the end of the term was just a few days off.
The custom of parades, memorial programs in community cemeteries, decoration of graves of deceased veterans has continued through the years. But changing times seem to have dictated an attitude of diminishing patriotism and interest even though additional wars have added to the toll of honored dead.
During the post-World War I days when we were growing up, Decoration Day parades stirred a deep feeling of patriotism among the many who lined the routes of the marches. Small children waved little flags. Men removed their hats and placed them over their hearts as the colors went by. Many women had tears in their eyes as the processions passed.
There were no fire trucks. No displays of latest model cars, no political figures waving to crowds from passing cars.
Marching units were uniformed members of veterans who had fought along with their comrades who fell in Chateau-Thierry, the Argonne Forest and other battlefields of Europe. There were veterans of the Spanish-American War of 1898 among the marchers. Riding in open touring cars or horse-drawn carriages were the aging veterans of the Civil War.
The stirring martial music was provided by high school or community bands, and by bugle and drum corps that were active in those days. The Buhl Independent Rifles, a crack drill team from Sharon, always was a feature of the parades.
The parades led to cemeteries where memorial programs were held. The roll call of departed comrades was followed by a rifle salute, the bugling of ``Taps'' and the chilling echo. Most of this format has been retained through the years.
Shortly after World War I, veterans groups began visiting the community cemeteries and marking the graves of the fallen heroes with plaques and Flags. Most of the graves were of Civil War and Spanish-American War veterans. Many of the Americans slain in the 1918 conflict were buried in Flanders Field in Belgium or in other European cemeteries.
Since that time, the list of honored dead has grown. Casualties of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Desert Storm, the Bosnia policing action and other skirmishes where U.S. troops have been involved are among the revered to be remembered.
If the reverence and patriotism which marked the
holiday in the early days could be restored, Memorial Day again could be
a day dedicated to grateful tribute.
Wally Wachter is retired managing editor of The Herald