With a busy Memorial Day on tap, several area events are being offered to honor those veterans who have fallen.
American Legion Post 240 Legionnaires and other veterans will conduct a short (12-15 minutes) flag raising ceremony Monday, May 26 at the Dublin Veterans Memorial at Shamrock Park near the Dublin Library at 206 W. Blackjack.
The public is invited. Veterans are encouraged to wear their military medals or ribbons and uniform if it still fits.
On Memorial Day, the flag of the United States is raised briskly to the top of the staff and then solemnly lowered to the half-staff position, where it remains only until noon. It is then raised to full staff for the remainder of the day. The half-staff position remembers the more than one million men and women who gave their lives in service of their country.
At noon, their memory is raised by the living, who resolve not to let their sacrifice be in vain, but to rise up in their stead and continue the fight for liberty and justice for all.
There will also be a Memorial Day ceremony Monday, May 26 at 9 a.m. at West End Cemetery in Stephenville. Those who are wanting to help put flags on Veterans’ graves are invited to arrive at 8 a.m. to help place flags.
Everyone is invited to help, organizers said.
For those unfamiliar with the history of Memorial Day, it is an American holiday, observed on the last Monday of May, honoring the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military.
Originally known as Decoration Day, it originated in the years following the Civil War and became an official federal holiday in 1971.
The date of Decoration Day was chosen because it wasn’t the anniversary of any particular battle.
According to Historychannel. com, on the first Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, and 5,000 participants decorated the graves of the 20,000 Civil War soldiers buried there.
The first ‘decoration days’ as they were coined occurred after the Civil War, which claimed more lives than any conflict in U.S. History and required the establishment of the first national cemeteries.
By the late 1860s, Americans had begun holding springtime tributes to those countless fallen soldiers, decorating their graves with flowers and reciting prayers.
In 1966, the federal government declared Waterloo, New York, the official birthplace of Memorial Day.