Monday, May 25, is Memorial Day.
While the date only became a federal holiday in 1971, it dates back to 1866, when the women of Columbus, Miss., laid flowers on the graves of Union and Confederate dead buried in the town’s Friendship Cemetery.
Columbus had been a hospital town, treating wounded soldiers. Many were brought there after the Battle of Shiloh aka the Battle of Pittsburg Landing in southwestern Tennessee, with the cemetery eventually containing 2,000 graves of Confederate and 150 graves of Union soldiers who did not survive.
New York poet Francis Miles Finch, who happened to be in town that day and attended the ceremony, later penned the poem “The Blue and the Grey,” which opens with, “By the flow of the inland river / Whence the fleets of iron have fled / Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver / Asleep are the ranks of the dead / Under the sod and the dew / Waiting the judgment-day / Under the one, the Blue / Under the other, the Gray.”
The memorial spread across the South as Memorial Day, later Confederate Memorial Day, to differentiate it from Decoration Day, which began in the North in 1868 and honored those who died to preserve the Union during the American Civil War.
The event become more commonly practiced after World War II, when it expanded to honor those who died in the two world wars.
The date was officially named Memorial Day in 1967 and made a federal holiday by Congress in 1971.
The weekend preceding Memorial Day has also become the de facto kickoff to summer, although “summer” this year is a relative term considering temperatures reached into the 90s in Arizona back in April. For comparison, last year, we got a high-altitude freak snowstorm on May 23.
Warm weather has been with us for weeks, taunting those who remain indoors with blue skies and inviting temperatures.
With Arizona schools prematurely canceled since March, and with many Arizonans out of work, relying on savings or unemployment checks boosted by federal funds, many have been able to travel around the state for more than two months, hoping to avoid the big crowds at grocery stores in the Phoenix and Tucson areas and have seen the far reaches of Northern Arizona as welcome respite to get out of quarantine but still be safe camping far away from others.
Still other Arizonans, looking to save some money, have scrapped plans to travel cross country or to theme parks and instead see more of Arizona, which they can reach by inexpensive automobile.
We have also a handful of visitors from states like Colorado, New York and California, whose residents face far stricter lock downs than in Arizona, driving or flying in to Sedona to spend some of their time in a state that is reopening.
But even these handfuls of tourists are no where near our normal levels with hotels flirting with 20% occupancy when they would normally be full or near it this weekend.
With closures and restrictions limiting activties in the Verde Valley and the Phoenix area for the last month, families around the state are eager for some sense of normalcy and will use the weekend to visit local lakes, state parks, national monuments and tourist destinations that have reopened.
Most of Arizona’s schools and universities that have done online learning have graduated their seniors and freed students to get away from their laptops and travel.
We can expect an unusual holiday this year. There will likely be more locals and visitors getting into the waters of the Verde River and Oak Creek and camping on U.S. Forest Service lands around the Verde Valley.
Come Monday, remember the purpose of this weekend is to honor our fallen. The Sedona Marine Corps League will host a Memorial Day ceremony at 9 a.m. at the Sedona Military Service Park, located at 25 Northview Road on the southwest corner of State Route 89A and Northview Road in West Sedona.
The event will include a flag-raising and music, but the league is asking residents not to attend, and instead watch the video live on Facebook or review it after the ceremony.
Many of us also use Memorial Day to remember our relatives who went to war and gave the last full measure of devotion on the battlefield or have since shuffled off this mortal coil after returning safely home as veterans.
However you enjoy this weekend, on Monday, pay tribute to those who fought to give us the civic freedoms we enjoy.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
