Notes From My Knapsack 5-24-18

Notes From My Knapsack 5-24-18

Jeff Gill

 

150 Memorial Days in Granville

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Monday, the village of Granville will mark our 150^th Memorial Day observance. The parade will step off from Broadway and Main about 10:40 am, head to Maple Grove Cemetery, and at 11:00 am our community will remember those who have lost their lives in this nation's service.

 

150. It's a round number, the sort we mark without wondering why the 149^th or 151^st doesn't get quite the same attention, but one hundred and fifty occasions to do something as a community does seem to call for some sort of public comment.

 

1868 was a year when the Civil War was three full years in the past. Those intervening springtimes had seen cemeteries from Waterloo, New York to Richmond, Virginia welcome family and friends to tend the still fresh graves of their loved ones lost in the battle to preserve the Union. In early America, the tradition of a "decoration day" existed before the 1860s, a time to go to the church yard once the frosts were past and it was safe plant flowers, or just to pull weeds. With the sacrifice of the Civil War, this informal pattern began to become a special sort of day, with communities planning to come together and pray and sing and speak to each other.

 

So it was that on May 5 of 1868, General Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic asked all the members of that nationwide veterans' association to locally observe May 30 as a day to be "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." He didn't call it Memorial Day, though that term was used fairly early on; most now called it, in capital letters, Decoration Day. As Decoration Day, it quickly became a state holiday around most of the country . . . and believe it or not, Memorial Day was not a federal holiday until 1971, when it also was made a "Monday holiday" along with a few other holiday adjustments. Some of us still have a nod in our hearts and a prayer of our own when the calendar shows May 30, the "traditional" date as Gen. Logan established.

 

I'm honored to be asked back to offer the invocation and benediction for this program, which is indeed our own 150^th in Granville. Other wars have come and gone, seasons of change have passed through, but we all stop whatever else we are doing and come, in subdued and attentive throngs, to honor those who have died in harm's way. We've not missed a year from the start of this tradition, and are quite certain as a village that we have done so for 150 years running.

 

Much of what is said and done will be familiar; if you've been to one before, it will be much the same, yet it's always different. New names on the "Last Roll Call," different young readers, honored guest speakers.

 

If you've not noticed, one subtle tradition of Memorial Day speaks to what we want to remember with this commemoration. The American flag is, from its first raising on Memorial Day, at half-staff. Then American Legion Post 398 & the Sons of the American Revolution will salute the flag, and our honored dead, with rifle fire and solemn attendance at their posts, buglers from the Granville High School Marching Band will play "Taps," and then the flag will be raised at or just after noon to its rightful place at the top of the pole.

 

We begin the day, with the lowered flag, in sorrow, but we conclude and depart will a lift to our banner and our hearts, looking to the heights for hope – praying as one people for peace.