Wednesday, May 31, 2006

The Two Memorial Days

Yes, I firmly hold that there are TWO Memorial Day holidays on the calendar. When I was a boy in Boise, every 30 May, that is, Memorial Day, my parents, sister and paternal grandmother would go to Cloverdale Cemetery in Boise to decorate Grandpa Graham's grave. My memories of this are as clear as memories of boyhood Christmases.

Then came the federal government move to change some holidays to always falling on Mondays. One was Memorial Day, which went from 30 May to the final Monday. And of course, this simply led to many citizens viewing the holiday as an extended weekend in which to celebrate the unofficial start of summer with picnics, visits to lakes, etc. This leads to so many forgetting the first significance of the day, which also used to be called "Decoration Day".

Now, as far as I know, Grandpa Graham never served in the military, and it wasn't until I was an adult that I came to understand that Memorial Day was primarily to remember the military dead and most particularly the combat dead. But you know, he WAS buried in a cemetery where all the grave markers were identical - just like military cemeteries such as Arlington. (Only they weren't identical upright stones but rather metal plaques flush with the ground.) And especially when I learned such significance, I continued to think of Memorial Day as more proper on 30 May - and especially in years when that day would fall on the day before or after the final Monday (the current observed holiday).

This occurred in A.D. 1999, when I visited my best friend of that time at Ft. Lee, VA, heard a great sermon about the meaning of Memorial Day by an Army chaplain on Sunday the 30th (the traditional holiday) in Ft. Lee chapel, and then we all went to D.C. on Monday (the observed holiday) and among other things visited Arlington National Cemetery. I was awed by the seemingly endless rows of identical gravestones, most marking the graves of military dead and some who gave their lives in defense of these United States.

After moving to San Antonio four years ago, I got to attend Memorial Day ceremonies in nearby Ft. Sam Houston National Cemetery (on the observed day). These were every bit as patriotic and memorable as those of Arlington. This year on the observed day (Monday the 29th) my neighbor and I went to the cemetery early to pay our respects to the dead and see them setting up for the later ceremony. Then I had to go to work at Fiesta Texas, and he had other things to do also.

I went a couple of hours early, so I could check out the changes that Six Flags administration had made to the water park, which they had also renamed from Armadillo Beach to White Water Bay. Then it was "to work" on the train. Can anything that fun really be called "work"? And after we shut down the train for the night I re-entered the park to see the "Lone Star Spectacular" laser and fireworks show before heading home to bed. Viewing the colorful, musical (mostly country with a little rock, a little Mexican-American) tribute to the Lone Star State always makes me very proud to be a Fiesta Texas employee, a San Antonio resident & a Texan. God bless Texas! God bless America!

The next day (the traditional holiday of the 30th) I was back "to work" on the train for the A.M. shift. But I was still remembering the dead before I went to the park. We had a quiet day at (Six Flags) Fiesta Texas, with few visitors or "Guests" as we call them. Still, I mentioned the "two" Memorial Day" holidays to a couple of people during this day.

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