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Always remember: Memorial Day 2012
The American Cemetery and Memorial in Manila, Philippines. More than 17,000 American and Filipino dead from World War II rest here; tablets list more than 36,000 missing. There are so many white marble markers that cemetery has an erie kind of glow at night. Below to the left is the grave marker of Martin Gift at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland. Gift, a union soldier from Maryland, died at the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, the bloodiest day in American history. Gift did not die in vain; the battle, technically a Union victory, allowed President Abraham Lincoln to make the Emancipation Proclamation.
By Palm Beach Business.com
DELRAY BEACH — More than 1.3 million Americans have given their lives for country since the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord in 1775. On Monday, Memorial Day, we remember their sacrifice.
Appropriately enough, Memorial Day dates from the Civil War — the bloodiest war in American history — when northern and southern women would “decorate” the graves of Union Confederate dead. In 1866 Gen. John Logan, a Civil War veteran and commander of the Grand Army of the Republic — a sort of precursor of the VFW and American Legion — proclaimed May 30 as the day when flowers would be placed at the graves of both Union and Confederate dead at Arlington National Cemetery.
By 1890 most northern states recognized May 30 as Memorial Day, but the states of the former Confederacy refused to do so, preferring to hold their own observances on different dates. That continued even after World War I, when Congress changed Memorial Dayfrom honoring Civil War dead to dead from all wars.
Florida, in fact, continues to observe the fourth Monday in April as Confederate Memorial Day (as it does the birthdays of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis). That date coincides with the surrender of Gen. Joseph Johnston and his Army of Tennessee to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman two weeks after Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.
Local observances on Monday include:
— Boca Raton Memorial Day Ceremony, 9 a.m. Boca Raton Cemetary, 449 SW 4th Avenue, Boca Raton, 561 393-7827. Variety of civic and community groups, including the American Legion and Fort Lauderdale Highlanders, and police and firefighter honor guards, will participate.
— American Legion Memorial Day Ceremonies Deerfield Beach 9:15 a.m. Pineview Cemetary, 400 SW. 4th St; 9:45 a.m. Memorial Cemetary 380 NE 6th Avenue; 10:30 a.m. International Fishing Pier, 200 NE 21st Avenue. Ceremony at the pier will include a 21-gun salute, prayer and the laying of a wreath. Call 754-224-1711.
— Veteran's Coalition of South Florida Annual Memorial Day Ceremony, 9:30 a.m. Veteran's Park, 9400 West Palmetto Park Road, Boca Raton.
— Memorial Day Concert, 7 p.m. Mizner Park Amphitheatre, Mizner Boulevard at North Federal Highway, Boca Raton. Free program. Participants include the Indian River Pops Orchestra, the Robert Sharon Chorale with vocalist Seth Muse and the New Gardens Brass Band. Call 561 393-7827.
The cemetery at Appomattox Court House National Historic Site. Appomattox essentially marked the end of the Civil War in April 1865. Despite the signifiance of what happened here, the cemetery is small and mostly Confederate.
