Welcome and thank you for helping us honor these men and their families for the sacrifice they made. Memorial Day honors the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. May we take a moment of silence to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
Memorial Day was originally known as Decoration Day, it originated in the years following the Civil War and became an official federal holiday in 1971. The Civil War, which ended in the spring of 1865, claimed more lives than any conflict in U.S. history and required the establishment of the country’s first national cemeteries. Our veterans’ park/Purple Heart Memorial Park was created in 1913 by former mayor, Van B. Bailey who donated land in honor of all veterans from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War. On May 5, 1868, General John A. Logan, leader of an organization for Northern Civil War veterans, called for a nationwide day of remembrance later that month. “The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land,” he proclaimed. On the first Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, and 5,000 participants decorated the graves of the 20,000 Civil War soldiers buried there. |
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