Service, Sacrifice and Salvation John 3:16

Honoring the Sacrifice to our Nation

Our Country has decided more by mutual consent than anything else, that we as a people and a country would honor the service and sacrifice of our fallen service members with a National Holiday that is observed each year on the last Monday in May. The history of Memorial Day is intertwined in fabric and history of our greatest and deadliest conflict, the United States Civil War. A number of cities and towns across the US claim to be the birthplace of memorial day and 1966 Congressional Resolution recognized Waterloo, NY for conducting 100 years of celebrations, offically labeling it as the birthplace of Memorial Day. The first National Memorial Day was held at Arlington National Cemetery on May 30, 1968. Continued research and scholarship has identified Columbus, GA as the possible location of the first Memorial Day, or Decoration Day that honored the fallen of both the Union and Confederates as the other regional remembrances only recognized either Union or Confederates.

There will always be more to discover in the written record about the evolution of Memorial Day, but with the perspective of more than 150 years, "it may be less important to identify the holiday's first observation," observes one scholar, "than to understand how profoundly the large number of claimants to its origin indicates the ubiquity of the impulse, North and South, white and black, to commemorate the dead." - www.cem.va.gov

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