Hey, are you all set for the weekend? Got all the picnic food, charcoal and beverages?
Do you have the reservations for the cabin, the campsite or wherever you plan to spend the time?
Sounds like fun doesn't it? It probably will be – except for the families of the men and women who lost their lives fighting for the protection of our country. In fact, those who died so that you and yours can "celebrate" the Memorial Day weekend in peace and safety.
We tend to forget that part of the story. For those families, the "holiday" brings mixed emotions because they associate the commemorations with real people in their families, many of whom they knew personally. For them, Memorial Day is a day to remember the lives and deaths of people they loved and lost.
There's an interesting test of how real the meaning of Memorial Day is regarded in your town. Try it. Drive up and down several residential streets and see how many people are flying the flag in front of their houses – the Stars and Stripes, not any other.
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I've done that and it's shocking how few residents even bother. I'd wager many of those people don't even own an American flag. There have been years when my house was the only one in my area to show the colors.
It varies each year, of course, but it still isn't as many as it should be, considering that over the course of our history more than 1,354,000 of our citizens were killed defending our freedoms. That doesn't even take into consideration those who were injured and whose lives were drastically changed forever by their grievous wounds.
Are we so calloused that we can easily forget the people who died defending our freedom, while we have a barbecue on Memorial Day?
Apparently so.
I remember when I was little, every patriotic holiday was the occasion for a parade. The school bands and the veteran's bands, flags and lots of people. Some cheered, and some cried as memories flooded their consciousness. They knew and they remembered.
Those earlier parades honored the returned veterans … but back then, we did not see the vets with their mangled bodies. In those days, the worst of the injuries resulted in deaths – either on the battlefield or in military hospitals. What families saw then were funerals and cemeteries.
Today, with more rapid evacuations of injured and the latest in medical treatments, many vets survive injuries that used to be fatal. They return home now, but many are missing limbs and often are vision or hearing impaired.
But it doesn't matter – living or dead – we owe every one of them the honor that Memorial Day commemorates.
It began after the Civil War and the day was known as Decoration Day since it was the opportunity to decorate military war graves. After World War I, the holiday was expanded to include honoring all U.S. war dead.
It remained so until 1971, when the name was changed to Memorial Day and Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, making the holiday officially the last Monday in May.
That law was the same one that made changes to other celebrations – namely those of the President's birthdays. When I was a kid, we had Lincoln's Birthday (Feb. 12) and Washington's Birthday (Feb. 22) as separate holidays. Now, thanks to Congress, we have just "Presidents Day," another three-day weekend that makes for great picnics and the opportunity to forget what the weekend commemorates.
"President who????"
As an aside, to make it worse, there's a bill proposed in California to replace the Washington or Lincoln's birthday holiday with "May Day," the International Workers Day which is an official holiday of the Soviet Union.
L.A. Democrat Assemblyman Miguel Santiago is the guy behind this and he's pushing to have the Assembly reconsider the proposal. It's just another example of California slipping further and further left – as if that's possible.
I'm proud of the military in our family. My father-in-law and his brother were in World War I, one in infantry and the other in aviation.
My mother had several uncles in the Army in World War II, one of whom was killed in the Battle of the Bulge. I have the flag that draped his casket.
My father did security work for the Army during that war, developing technology for weaponry.
I have several uncles who were in the Navy during World War II and several cousins who are in the Navy now; one is a SEAL. One cousin was in Vietnam in the Marines and my brother was in Vietnam in the Air Force.
Do I have an interest in perpetuating the patriotism of the military and what they did (and do) for our freedom and security? You bet I do!
If what little I can do is fly the Stars and Stripes on Saturday, Sunday and Monday this weekend, I will.
And I also fly the flag every other day of the year because I value my freedom and the people who help maintain it.
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