Editorial | Reason for Memorial Dayisn’t timing of parades

Some years after the U.S. Civil War, wounded combat veteran Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. – who was to become one of the nation’s great jurists during his long tenure on the Supreme Court – addressed fellow veterans in Keene, N.H., on why we have Memorial Day. Holmes’ words resonate 131 years later as we honor the lives of those fallen in battle.

The national holiday on Monday is, or should be, about honoring the lives of Americans who died in battle for their country in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, on Guadalcanal in the South Pacific or the Battle of the Bulge during World War II, in the trenches of France during the Great War or the many battlefields, South and North, of the Civil War. This holiday should be more than a day off work, and relaxing and having fun – and it most surely should not be about changing the date of a parade.

Folks still upset about the Myrtle Beach parade being on May 16 instead of the Saturday prior to Memorial Day should go on Monday to watch the veterans march and applaud until their hands sting. But enough already with the complaint that changing the parade date somehow disrespected veterans. Trying to make the weekend safe for everyone cannot reasonably be considered disrespectful to any group. The parade has been on the Saturday prior to Memorial Day in the past, and likely will return to that day. And, by the way, May 16 was Armed Forces Day.

Thanks to the Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association Chapter 34-3 for proposing Monday’s march and the city of Myrtle Beach for incorporating the march in Military Appreciation Days events, which run throughout the month of May to celebrate and honor all who serve or served their nation.

In the Civil War, Holmes was a first lieutenant in the 20th Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteers and was “seriously wounded at the battles of Ball’s Bluff, Antietam and Chancellorsville,” according to The American Legion magazine. In its May issue, Legion published Holmes’ address on May 30, 1884, at John Sedgwick Post No. 4, Grand Army of the Republic in Keene, N.H.

The Grand Army of the Republic was a Civil War veterans organization and its commander-in-chief, John A. Logan of Illinois, is credited with making Memorial Day official with General Order No. 11. Logan, a major general in the Union Army, designated May 30 as the date to decorate, with flowers or otherwise, “the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion.”

“Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still keep up Memorial Day, and it set me thinking of the answer,” Holmes told fellow veterans 131 years ago. “It celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies … our belief that to act with enthusiasm and faith is the condition of acting greatly. To fight out a war, you must believe something and want something with all your might. … you must be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out.”

Holmes said he was certain that both Confederate and Union soldiers had no personal hostility in “doing their best to kill one another.” Holmes said federal soldiers “believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluble; we, or many of us at least, also believed that the conflict was inevitable, and that slavery had lasted long enough. But we equally believed that those who stood against us held just as sacred convictions that were the opposite of ours and we respected them as every man with a heart must respect those who give all for their belief.”

Memorial Day should have “meaning also for those who do not share our memories,” Holmes said, referring to folks on the home front in the Civil War and, we submit, Americans with no memory of most of the conflicts that followed.

Memorial Day, Holmes said, “is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return.”

On the Supreme Court of the United States, Holmes was famous for his dissents from the majority opinions. The “Great Dissenter” most likely would take issue with many of today’s prevailing values. All of America – communities and counties, states and nation – need more of Holmes’ belief “that to act with enthusiasm and faith is the condition of acting greatly.”

This story was originally published May 23, 2015 at 1:34 PM with the headline "Editorial | Reason for Memorial Dayisn’t timing of parades."