Memorial Day: the unofficial beginning of summer. It’s an opening day for tourist season that calls to mind the silent movie footage of pioneers in covered wagons racing into Oklahoma Territory to stake out their piece of the American Dream.
Like most Americans, we are looking forward to a long weekend of relative leisure, a cookout or two maybe, some dedicated family time and a chance to take in some parades on Monday.
We’ll take a day off as soon as anybody else, please and thank you, but what is really important here, is the reason why we have this extra day of leisure. Originally called Decoration Day when it was first marked in 1868, the holiday started as an occasion to mark the graves of Civil War veterans, Americans all, at a time the wounds were still raw from that conflict.
In the years since, Memorial Day expanded to include all veterans who had fallen in conflict and lately it seems to include everyone, military or not. In our mind, we still think it mostly applies to military men and women who serve(d) our great nation: those who preserve and protect our freedom at risk of their very lives.
Every veteran we have ever written about in our pages has probably at least one close friend who didn’t come home.
It is their sacrifice that gives us this day; this long weekend where we can do things Americans take for granted. We are as free as we are because others have purchased our liberty in blood.
When we are sitting in our metaphorical hammock this weekend, hopefully soaking in the first breeze of summer, we will think of those men and women, and we will remember.
