It is little-known, but the first incarnation of what we know today as Memorial Day was begun May 1st, 1865, just weeks following the South’s surrender ending the Civil War. A group of formerly enslaved Americans dug up the bodies of 257 Black Union soldiers who had been thoughtlessly and callously buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp. The Charleston, South Carolina, group felt the fallen soldiers deserved a respectful, dignified burial for helping secure their freedom.
Still, while that may have been the first such commemoration of America’s fallen, a number of cities across several states boast of being the baptismal ground for Memorial Day. It is a mystery that may never be solved.
It would be three years later, in 1868, when the first decoration of the graves of soldiers became more formalized. Major Gen. John A. Logan ordered that Decoration Day be observed each May 30th. The date was chosen because flowers for placing at gravesites would be in bloom everywhere in the U.S. It wasn’t until 1971, however, that Decoration Day became Memorial Day and was officially adopted as a federal holiday. Today, Memorial Day is observed on the last Monday in May.
But like many things, a day of remembrance means different things to different people. Families will still pay respectful visits to national cemeteries, including Denver’s Fort Logan National Cemetery, where tiny American flags stand in the shadow of the gleaming alabaster headstones of long-ago soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines. There, they will place flowers or leave thoughtful mementos. But in cities and towns across the country, Memorial Day is not a single day, but an often sad and painful everyday.
Today, May 24th, marks the one-year anniversary of last spring’s tragic mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed. The mas- sacre occurred while more than a hundred law enforcement officers stood outside the classroom, weapons drawn, as the gunman methodically and gruesomely exacted his toll. Inexplicably, they failed to act. Families of the victims still await an official explanation for the police response.
For most families this Memorial Day, time will have made many of these holiday gravesite visits less painful. Tears now shed will be shed less from loss and more from a memory that touches the heart more gently.
But the gravesite sadness for fallen soldiers is different than the heartbreak that grips Uvalde and the nearly 400 U.S. cities and towns where it will be children—first-graders, young teens, never to graduate high school seniors—who will be mourned. It will also be the nurturing teachers, many of whom died while shielding those very same children, who will be remembered. For too many families, Memorial Day will simply be another day, one filled with tears, sadness and, most painfully, nowhere to turn.
But as families grieve, they will also rage knowing that they are not the last to lose a loved one in a classroom or on a campus, but only the latest. They know, if past is prologue, their pain, like a phantom, will soon land in another town and on another family and, saddest of all, by gun violence.
Since Columbine, the 1999 Littleton, Colorado, massacre that has come to define school shootings and where twelve students and a teacher were killed by two fellow students, school shootings have plagued America. From preschool to high school, escape drills are now as much a part of the curriculum as math and science.
The pain from school shootings, while most searing for loved ones, also ricochets as unpredictably as lightning. Proof can be found in a 2012 photograph taken by White House photographer Pete Souza. It shows a then President Obama being briefed on the Sandy Hook school shooting by
Homeland Security advisor John Kelly. The President is seen leaning against a sofa, arms crossed, shoulders slumped, eyes closed. He calls that moment, that December day, “one of the darkest” of his time as president. Twenty first graders and six adults died that day.
From Columbine more than two decades ago to Nashville and the March 2023 Covenant School shooting in which six victims, including three 9-year-olds died—the deadly arc of this formerly unthinkable crime has only lengthened. The only thing that has changed is the new left behind victims and those who loved them will carry for a lifetime.
Gun laws, including those that might restrict the sale of assault weapons—a common link in school shootings—have only been addressed in a handful of states, Colorado among them. Amazingly, a number of states have actually loosened gun laws. Florida, as an example, recently passed legisla- tion allowing anyone to carry concealed weapons without a permit. It was officially signed into law by soon-to-be presi- dential candidate Governor Ron DeSantis.
On Memorial Day, flowers, notes, special remembrances will still be left at the headstones of our fallen warriors— both men and women—along with softly spoken goodbyes. But for those families that will never watch their child grow out of their fantasy affection for Spiderman or other super- heroes, it will be just one more day of thoughtful curiosity and momentary melancholy about just who their little boy or girl would have become. For them, it will be just another memorial day.
