Today is Memorial Day. Its origin is mostly forgotten now, but it too is worth remembrance. It's more than a Monday shopping day.
WATERLOO, N.Y. - Like almost everyone in this village, pharmacist Henry Welles joined the jubilant crowds at welcome-home parades for Civil War soldiers in 1865. It got him thinking that a solemn day to memorialize those who didn't make it back alive also was needed.Posted by Alan at May 28, 2007 07:27 AMHis idea took root on May 5, 1866. The woolen mills along the canal shut down for the day. Banks and grocery stores did too. And scores of villagers marched in mourning, some like Welles visiting all three cemeteries to decorate each veteran's grave with a floral cross.
More than two dozen communities around the United States, from Boalsburg, Pa., to Macon, Ga., and Carbondale, Ill., to Richmond, Va., claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day. Yet the official distinction, signed into law by President Johnson in 1966, is held by Waterloo.
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"It doesn't take away from other places where homage was paid by various individuals," said Tanya Warren, curator of Waterloo's newly expanded National Memorial Day Museum. "The difference is Waterloo's commemoration was consistently observed and community-wide. Everything shut down. That did not happen elsewhere."
In 1866, people were overcome by more than just emotion. It turned out to be stiflingly hot, and Welles was felled by heat stroke severe enough to be blamed for his death 14 months later at age 47.
"Poor Henry! He sacrificed his life for Memorial Day," lamented Warren.
The town switched the holiday to May 30 in 1868 when Gen. John Logan, the new commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, issued a proclamation to Union veterans designating it a day of commemoration for Civil War dead.
First known as Decoration Day, Memorial Day expanded to an observance honoring all U.S. war dead after World War I and in 1971 was made an official national holiday to be held on the last Monday in May.