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DHS DivisionsAdult Services PO Box 1437 Slot 1412 Little Rock AR 72203 |
 By Herb Sanderson, Director Division of Aging & Adult Services This
column appears in the May 2001 edition of Aging Arkansas,
Later this month our nation will celebrate Memorial Day. Listening to a program on National Public Radio last year created a renewed interest in this day for me. The segment, "Missing You, Last Letters" featured an exhibit at the U.S. Postal Museum. It was a collection of powerful letters written by ordinary soldiers in WWII. They were the last letters they ever wrote. Boys and young men age 18 to 23 wrote all the letters. An example is that of Lt. Thomas Kennedy who was captured while fighting in the Philippines. He was put on a boat to Japan. Suffering from dysentery without medicine or much to eat, his weight dropped to 90lbs. On the back of some tattered and torn photos of his family, he wrote the following letter: January 16, 1945. I am writing this so that you will know exactly what happened and won't be like so many parents. I really made a mistake in not listening to you about coming over here. It is pretty hard to check out this way without a fighting chance. But, we can't live forever. I am not afraid to die. I just hate the thought of not seeing you again. I guess you can tell Patty that fate just didn't want us to be together. Hold a nice service for me in Bakersfield and put headstone in new cemetery. Love and waiting for you in the world beyond. Your son, A few days later he died and was buried at sea. Sixteen and one-half million Americans took part in WWII. Four hundred
seven thousand of them died in service, more than 292,000 in battle. All told, over 35,000,000 Americans have served in war since 1917, the beginning of WWI. According to the Veteran's Administration, springtime tributes to soldiers and sailors date back to 1866 when a group of women visited a cemetery to decorate the graves of Confederate soldiers who had fallen in the battle at Shiloh. Nearby were graves of Union soldiers, neglected because they were the enemy. Disturbed at the sight of bare graves, the women placed some of their flowers on those graves as well. The first large observance was held May 30, 1868 at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River from Washington DC. The cemetery already held the remains of 20,000 Union dead and several hundred Confederate dead. By the end of the 19th century, Memorial Day ceremonies were being held on May 30 throughout the nation. State legislatures passed proclamations designating the day. It was not until after World War I, however, that the day was expanded to honor those who have died in all American wars. In 1971 Memorial Day was declared a national holiday by an act of Congress, though it is still often called Decoration Day. It was then also placed on the last Monday in May. In 1868, when Maj. Gen. John A. Logan's gave orders to decorate graves "with the choicest flowers of springtime," he stated, "We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance.... Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic." The crowd attending the first Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery was approximately the same size as those that attend today's observance, about 5,000 people. Then, as now, small American flags were placed on each grave - a tradition followed at many national cemeteries today. The origins of special services to honor those who die in war can be found in antiquity. The Athenian leader Pericles offered a tribute to the fallen heroes of the Peloponnesian War over 24 centuries ago that could be applied today to the 1.1 million Americans who have died in the nation's wars: "Not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions, but there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men." Is Memorial Day still a relevant holiday? A fair question if you consider most spend the day shopping, watching sports, or working in the yard. A question asked and answered many years ago: Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still kept up Memorial Day, and it set me thinking of the answer. Not the answer that you and I should give to each other — not the expression of those feelings that, so long as you live, will make this day sacred to memories of love and grief and heroic youth — but an answer which should command the assent of those who do not share our memories, and in which we of the North and our brethren of the South could join in perfect accord…. So to the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial Day is still kept up we may answer, it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiasm and faith is the condition of acting greatly. To fight out a war, you must believe something and want something with all your might. So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching… Such hearts -- ah me, how many! -- were stilled twenty years ago; and to us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every year--in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life--there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death... But grief is not the end of all. I seem to hear the funeral march become
a paean. I see beyond the forest the moving banners of a hidden column.
Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death--of
life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring.
As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the
awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil
our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.
Division of Aging and Adult Services
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