I remember going with my father to the Memorial Park in Vineland, NJ, to decorate graves. That was 75 years ago. I was about 5. All the veterans’ groups in the town would join in this annual rite. Small American flags, flowers, various mementos, and veterans groups’ medallions were used to mark the graves of fallen American servicemen. There weren’t many women in uniform in those days.
Then there would be a town barbecue with fire pits and chicken barbecues and a few rides for kids. A parade was assembled. A few World War I survivors and the many more World War II survivors would march and carry flags. Dad marched — he served with the US Navy in the South Pacific.
Folks would salute as the flags went by. The high school band played. This scene was repeated in thousands of towns, and with more grandeur, in big cities. (For a taste of the Memorial Day parades in those days, captured in old photographs, see the Dearborn Museum’s Memorial day page at https://thedhm.org/memorial-day-through-the-decades/memorial-day-1940-1969/
and https://www.communitynews.org/towns/hamilton-post/yardville-groveville-memorial-day-parade-unites-community-for-146-years/article_1043fa1f-f544-55dd-8aad-86030aaed0d4.html.)
(213th Band Marching in the Memorial Day Parade – Allentown PA,
Unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
My family’s history of observing Memorial Day, previously called “Decoration Day,” harkens back to my Great Uncle George Kotok. He was known in Vineland for his oration given at a Memorial Day event a few years after the end of World War I. My father’s Uncle George had served in the US Army Cavalry under General Pershing in Mexico. He was injured and never fully recovered. He died in the ’20s, before the Great Depression.
General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing died when I was five years old. His history is not well known anymore. While Pershing’s fame was framed in World War I, his earlier commanding role in connection with US military incursions into Mexico during the Mexican Revolution is what marked my family history. That is where Uncle George Kotok became a wounded warrior. For a biography of General Pershing, see “John J. Pershing,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_J._Pershing. For a history lesson about US incursions into Mexico during the Mexican Revolution, see this short summary from the Veterans Museum: “"United States Interventions in Mexico,” https://veteranmuseum.net/research-united-states-interventions-in-mexico/. An interesting side note in the saga of Mexican/US relations is the story of the famous “Zimmermann telegram,” in which Germany tried to recruit Mexico into the world war against the United States (“Zimmermann Telegram,” https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/about-wwi/zimmermann-telegram).
One little-known piece of Decoration Day history concerns its beginnings. The first documented Decoration Day celebration was identified by historian David Blight in 1996 as he was doing research for a book. That celebration was a gathering of freed slaves in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865, shortly after the official end of the Civil War, a year before other known observances and three years before the nation embraced this day of remembrance. Here’s the link and the story, which takes just three or four minutes to read: “One of the Earliest Memorial Day Ceremonies Was Held by Freed African Americans,” https://www.history.com/news/memorial-day-civil-war-slavery-charleston.
Most celebrants this Memorial Day weekend won’t know the history about the post-Civil War origins of this holiday. Most won’t think about General Pershing, who was a mentor for Generals Eisenhower, MacArthur, Bradley, and others. Most may not even think about the present-day war in Ukraine, as the modern-day equivalents of the WWI trenches are under siege in places like Bakhmut, where drones and tanks have long since replaced horses and cavalry.
We will close with the words of the famous Spanish poet George Santayana: “Those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it.”
To all readers, we wish you a happy and history-rich Memorial (Decoration) Day weekend. Please stay safe.
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