Dying for a three-day weekend

by Denny Banister

Grandma Stuhlmann called it Decoration Day. As a youngster, I remember wondering why grandma had a different name for Memorial Day, but historically, she was correct. The original intent of Memorial Day was to decorate with flowers the graves of Civil War dead, both Union and Confederate, at Arlington National Cemetery – it was called Decoration Day.

While that first recognition occurred in 1868, Decoration Day was not recognized in all northern states until 1890 and not by southern states until after World War I when the observance became Memorial Day, a day to honor Americans who died fighting in any of our wars. Grandma was 24 years of age by the time the name and intent of Decoration Day changed, and 24-year habits are very hard to break.

My earliest remembrance of Memorial Day had nothing to do with war and little to do with death. I was born near the end of World War II, and by the time I was old enough to remember Memorial Day, our family observed the day with a picnic.

We did stop at the cemetery to place flowers on graves of loved ones, but they had not died fighting in war. Memorial Day was becoming a day to remember all who had died, but to me, my sisters and cousins who would spend the day picnicking and playing in the park, Memorial Day was a day to celebrate the closing of school and the opening of public swimming pools for the summer.

The trend toward celebration and away from commemoration was cemented by Congress in 1971 when the National Holiday Act was passed, moving some holidays to Mondays to create three-day weekends. Memorial Day observance moved from May 30 to the last Monday in May – it just so happens Memorial Day this year coincides with the original intended date.

I visited the small national cemetery in Jefferson City where there are quite a few rows of identical grave markers for those who served our country. I visited Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis where there are many more, and Arlington National Cemetery in our nation’s capital where the number of stones cover the landscape. I have not seen the 172 acres of crosses at Normandy, but have seen pictures of the seemingly unending markers of American war dead.

I like three-day weekends as much as the next working stiff, but it is time we stopped trivializing the importance of Memorial Day. If all our military personnel died for was to secure us a three-day weekend, they died in vain.

(Denny Banister, of Jefferson City, Mo., is the assistant director of public affairs for the Missouri Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization.)