Memorial Day

Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation's service.

There are many stories as to its actual beginnings, with over two dozen cities and towns laying claim to being the birthplace of Memorial Day. There is evidence that organized women's groups in the South were decorating graves before the end of the Civil War. A hymn published in 1867, "Kneel Where Our Loves are Sleeping" by Nella L. Sweet carried the dedication "To The Ladies of the South who are Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead".

According to David Blight, a Yale professor, a claim to the first observance of Decoration Day was in 1865 by liberated slaves at a historic race track in Charleston, South Carolina. The site was a former Confederate prison camp as well as a mass grave for Union soldiers who had died while captive. The freed slaves reinterred the dead Union soldiers from the mass grave to individual graves, fenced in the graveyard and built an entry arch declaring it a Union graveyard; a very daring thing to do in the South shortly after the North's victory. On May 30, 1868 the freed slaves returned to the graveyard with flowers they'd picked from the countryside & decorated the individual gravesites, thereby creating the first Decoration Day. A parade with thousands of freed blacks and Union soldiers was followed by patriotic singing and a picnic.  A newspaper reporter printed,

“when all had left, the holy mounds–the tops, the sides, and the spaces between them–were a mass of flowers, not a speck of earth could be seen; and as the breeze wafted the sweet perfumes from them, outside and beyond… there were few eyes among those who knew the meaning of the ceremony that were not dim with tears of joy.”

Decoration Day was officially proclaimed on May 5, 1868 by General John Logan, in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans’ organization. Logan issued a proclamation that “Decoration Day” be observed nationwide.  It was observed for the first time on May 30, 1868 when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.

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). The alternative name of "Memorial Day" was first used in 1882, but did not become more common until after World War II, and was not declared the official name by Federal law until 1967. It is now celebrated in almost every state on the last Monday in May.

Although traditional observance of Memorial Day has diminished over the years, there are a few notable exceptions. Since the late 1950's on the Thursday before Memorial Day, the 1,200 soldiers of the 3d U.S. Infantry place small American flags at each of the more than 260,000 gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They then patrol 24 hours a day during the weekend to ensure that each flag remains standing. In 1951, the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts of St. Louis began placing flags on the 150,000 graves at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery as an annual Good Turn, a practice that continues to this day. Beginning in 1998, on the Saturday before the observed day for Memorial Day, the Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts place a candle at each of approximately 15,300 grave sites of soldiers buried at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park on Marye's Heights (the Luminaria Program). And in 2004, Washington D.C. held its first Memorial Day parade in over 60 years.

We at J.E.I. Metallurgical, Inc. hope we all took a moment this Memorial Day to remember our freedom is precious and has been given to us by many brave soldiers.