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Honoring Memorial Day

Each year, thousands of Americans celebrate Memorial Day. Many attend sales, picnics, barbecues, or travel in some form during that weekend. Memorial Day weekend serves as the unofficial beginning of the summer season.

Memorial Day originally began as Decoration Day to honor the Civil War dead. Citizens would go out and picnic and leave flowers/decorations on the graves of the fallen. After the World Wars, the United States decided to change the name to Memorial Day to honor all those that gave their life in battle past and present. In 1971, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act officially made Memorial Day a holiday that took place on the last Monday of the month of May. Memorial Day is often confused for Veteran’s Day or is often thought of as an old war dead holiday. Many Gold Star families, such as ours, know this is not the case.

In our post-9/11 world, so many United States military personnel and veterans sacrifice so much each day. Our “freedom is not free” because these brave men and women sacrifice so much, many with their own lives in multiple ways.

I propose that by changing the verbiage of Happy Memorial Day to Honoring Memorial Day we will continue to honor all veterans, military, and even Americans from past to present, and even future, that have sacrificed in ways including the sacrifice of their own life for the freedoms we so very much enjoy. By educating the public of this change, we can in turn continue to honor Memorial Day for generations to come.

— Jennifer Henderson
Winston-Salem