It is doubtful those who first came up with the idea for a memorial day imagined how the holiday would play out.
They intended it as a day to honor soldiers killed in war — specifically the American Civil War, but later all conflicts — and many towns across the county accordingly hold solemn ceremonies with flags, salutes and gathering at military markers. Yet many others bill their celebrations as a tribute to veterans or a way to recognize those on active duty.
In Indianapolis, Charlotte and living rooms from coast to coast the weekend belongs to oval strips of asphalt. Sunday’s Indy 500 and World 600 have been signature events for decades, the former dating back to 1911.
And, yes, I know a corporate name should decorate the second race. But I’m becoming a bit curmudgeonly as I grow older. Besides, my traditional Memorial Day weekend revolves around Formula 1’s iconic Grand Prix of Monaco.
Yes, I plan on spending Saturday an Sunday planted in front of the television and Monday at work. Yet I’m almost certain that parades, backyard barbecues and Major League baseball games will define the holiday for other Americans. As that television ad from the ‘70s with the jingle now running incessantly through my head suggested, Americans like baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet.
Something tells me it was a commercial pitch for some auto company.
Music, laughter, revving engines, roaring crowds, processed food blackened to a crisp on a gas grill … it’s all quite a departure from the somber occasion they envisioned way back when.
I refer to the founder of Memorial Day as “they” because there are several claims to the first such event. A few decades ago I lived in central Pennsylvania near the town of Boalsburg, where people adamantly insisted residents began the tradition in 1864. Driving through Waterloo, New York, I learned the holiday started there, with a campaign by a drug store owner in 1865. Plaques in Carbondale, Illinois, disagree with both, asserting Memorial Day began at one of two cemeteries in the community. Then there are stories from Columbus, Mississippi, an oft-repeated account of free blacks in burying Union dead outside another southern town and claims from some two dozen other locations.
Naturally, the official honor goes to Arlington National Cemetery, across from Washington D.C., which hosted its first “Decoration Day” in 1868 after John Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic (a kind of early VFW) called for the “strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating” graves of the fallen.
Certainly the men and women who sacrificed all deserve quite a bit more than strewn flowers. They probably could do with fewer aimless celebrations. On the other hand, many of them died to preserve this nation and its culture, including ballgames, barbecues and such. It’s common for people at the Indy 500, for example, to spare a moment in honor of the dead.
We let these men and women down, however, when we transform Memorial Day into a celebration of veterans and active duty military. Although they deserve recognition, the former have Veterans Day and the latter …
Well, let’s hope we continue to give them all credit every chance we get.
