EDITORIAL: On Memorial Day (05/30/99)

EDITORIAL

On Memorial Day

The history of Memorial Day, marked in the U.S. as a day to remember the men and women who died in the service of their country, dates back to 1865 when Henry C. Welles, a druggist in Waterloo, N.Y., mentioned at a social gathering that tribute should be paid to the dead of the Civil War by decorating their graves. In the spring of the following year, he repeated this to Gen. John B. Murray, the county clerk. Gen. Murray embraced the idea, a committee was struck to plan a day devoted to honoring the dead (May 5) and the townspeople earnestly adopted the idea. The commemorations continued in 1867 in Waterloo. Then, in 1868, Gen. John A. Logan, first commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, issued General Order No. 11 designating May 30 as "Decoration Day," as it was then known. That year Waterloo joined other communities in the nation by conducting remembrance ceremonies on May 30.

In 1882 the name of the day was changed to Memorial Day and the observance expanded to honor the dead of all wars. In May 1966, in time for the centennial of the first commemoration of this remembrance day, Waterloo was recognized by the U.S. government as the "Birthplace of Memorial Day." Finally, in 1971 President Richard Nixon declared Memorial Day a national holiday to be marked on the last Monday in May.

Which brings us up to date and to Memorial Day 1999.

Ukrainians, too, have served in the military of the United States - for some this was their adopted country, for others the land of their birth. Significantly, the record of their service dates back to the Civil War, when Gen. John Turchin, who settled in Chicago after arriving in this country, volunteered to serve and was given command of the 19th Regiment of Illinois Volunteers. Known as the "Terrible Kozak," he attained the rank of brigadier general and commanded the cavalry brigade at the Battle of Chickamauga. Ukrainians served with their fellow Americans also in the Spanish-American War, the two world wars, Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. In World War II alone, over 250,000 Ukrainian Americans served in the U.S. armed forces.

Therefore, on Memorial Day we Ukrainian Americans should remember the sacrifices of members of our community.

And why should Memorial Day be observed at all? That question was eloquently answered back on May 30, 1884, by the famed American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841-1935), then a justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (he was named in 1902 to the U.S. Supreme Court). In a speech titled "In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire ..." and delivered on the village common in Keene, N.H., Justice Holmes explained that Memorial Day: "... celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most impressive form 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. So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching. More than that, 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. All that is required of you is that you should go somewhither as hard as ever you can. The rest belongs to fate. ..."

Justice Holmes spoke of the men who fought for the North and the South in the Civil War, both those who died in action and veterans, as well as the women "whose sex forbade them to offer their lives, but who gave instead their happiness." Having himself served with distinction in the Civil War, he said: "... to us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every year - in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life - there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death. ... Year after year the comrades of the dead follow, with public honor, procession and commemorative flags and funeral march - honor and grief from us who stand almost alone, and have seen the best and noblest of our generation pass away."

In that landmark address, one of his most famous speeches, Justice Holmes expressed his conviction that Memorial Day should be more than a time for the expression of grief: "But grief is not the end of all. I seem to hear the funeral march become a paean. I see beyond the forest the moving banners of a hidden column. Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death - of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and, amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil, our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope and will."

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