Memorial Day is supposed to be about mourning the nation’s fallen service members. But it’s come to anchor the unofficial start of summer and retail discounts.
A volunteer pauses as he helps put up a field of flags near the War Memorial Thursday, May 23, 2024, in Milwaukee. The Memorial Day tribute will feature 27,316 American flags representing Wisconsin residents who paid the ultimate price for freedom in service to our nation.
Castañeda also served in the Marines and Army National Guard, from which he knew men who died in combat. But he tries not to judge others who spend the holiday differently: “How can I expect them to understand the depth of what I feel when they haven’t experienced anything like that?”It’s a day of reflection and remembrance of those who died while serving in the U.S. military, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Yet Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, traced its first observance to October 1864, according to the Library of Congress. And women in some Confederate states were decorating graves before the war’s end. In 2021, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel cited the story in a Memorial Day speech in Hudson, Ohio. The ceremony’s organizers turned off his microphone because they said it wasn’t relevant to honoring the city’s veterans. The event’s organizers later resigned.Someone has always lamented the holiday’s drift from its original meaning.
The sun shines through the flags in the Memorial Day Flag Garden on Boston Common, May 27, 2023, in Boston.
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