Memorial Day has its origins in the Civil War, when in May of 1862, a group of Confederate widows spent a day decorating the graves of their fallen husbands. The tradition took hold and quickly became known in the South as Decoration Day. By the 1880’s this practice evolved into Memorial Day, and ever since, May 30 has been the day established to recognize and remember our nation’s Veterans.
I take the name of this article from the ancient lines of the Greek Poet Simonides:
“Go tell the Spartans, those that passeth by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie”.
These lines refer to the Leonidas and his heroic group of three hundred Spartans who blocked the Pass of Thermopylae, protecting their homeland from the advance of Xerxes’ Persian Army. They knew they would die, but chose to stay. They did so because they were raised to believe some things were worth more than their lives.
On Memorial Day of 2008 I think of many people. I think first of my father, father-in-law, and two uncles – all four World War Two Veterans. And I think of Brookfield Central Lancer and US Army Sergeant Scott Brown, and remember his young family.
I think of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who penned their names to a document ending with the words “and to this Declaration we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor”. Many would dangle at the end of a British rope for having signed that document. They felt their honor was worth that price.
I think of the private in the US Army of the Potomac, writing a letter to his young wife and four sons just a few days before Gettysburg. It is a missive of such pure and evocative beauty that it transcends our physical experience. I remember St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, and gazing in stupefied awe at Michelangelo’s Pieta. But even that did not have the impact upon me that Gettysburg did. Standing there on that hallowed ground in Pennsylvania, I remember thinking I would not want to meet the person who could do so and remain unmoved.
I think of Sigfried Sassoon, the World War One British Infantry Officer, risking his life by leaving the safety of his trench to look for his wounded friend. Amidst the carnage Sassoon found his bleeding comrade, who with his dying words looked up at him and murrmured, “I knew you would come”.
I think of Winston Churchill, alone and magnificent, defying Hitler as he proclaimed to the imperiled Free World, “We shall never surrender”.
I think of Douglas MacArthur, America’s greatest soldier and a distant relative of Churchill's. I envision him in his eighties on the plain of West Point, jaw still firm and shoulders square as he gave his last public address to the graduating Cadets, proclaiming as the theme of his address: “Duty, Honor, Country”.
I think of the opening scenes of Spielberg’s masterpiece Saving Private Ryan, with the enormous, overarching American flags lofting in the Channel-fed breezes, keeping vigil over the fallen that lie in the cemetery at Normandy.
I think of another cemetery - Arlington National outside of Washington D.C. It is a place of such reverential beauty that it beggars description. The land for the Cemetery once belonged to the family of Robert E. Lee and was confiscated by the Federal Government after the Civil War. I suspect that Lee would approve of how his land is being used.
For all our Veterans, living and dead, and for all who serve now, our prayers and our appreciation are so inadequate.
Yet it is all we can offer - and so I do.
