Decoration Day

By KC Colaianni

Decoration Day was borne out of the Civil War and a desire to honor our dead. It was officially proclaimed on May 5,1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 1. “The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land,” he proclaimed. The date of Decoration Day, as he called it, was chosen because it wasn’t the anniversary of any particular battle.

On the first Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, and 5,000 participants decorated the graves of the 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried there.

The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890, it was recognized by all of the northern states. The old confederacy refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dad on separate days until after World War I, when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war.

Red Poppies

In 1915, inspired by the poem “In Flanders Fields,” Moina Michael replied with her own poem:

“We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.”

She then conceived of an idea to wear red poppies on Memorial Day in honor of those who died serving the nation during war. She was the first to wear one, and sold poppies to her friends and co-workers with the money going to benefit servicemen in need. Later a Madam Guerin from France was visiting the United States and learned of this new custom started by Ms. Michael. When she returned to France she made artificial red poppies to raise money for war orphaned children and widowed women. This tradition spread to other countries. In 1921, the Franco-American Children’s League sold poppies nationally to benefit war orphans of France and Belgium. The League disbanded a year later and Madam Guerin approached the VFW for help.

Shortly before Memorial Day in 1922 the VFW became the first veterans’ organization to nationally sell poppies. Two years later their “Buddy” Poppy program was selling artificial poppies made by disabled veterans. In 1948 the US Post Office honored Ms. Michael for her role in founding the National Poppy movement by issuing a red 3 cent postage stamp with her likeness on it.[1]

IN FLANDERS FIELDS

By Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place: and in the sky

The larks still bravely singing fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead: Short days ago,

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loves: and now we lie

In Flanders fields!

Take up our quarrel with the foe

To you, from failing hands, we throw

The torch: be yours to hold it high

If ye break faith with us who die,

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.[2]

   

   

Decoration Day was always a special time when I was growing up in the 1950’s.  Most Americans were still very patriotic after WWII and gave special deference to military service.  My family and ancestors were not military folk.  We were farmers and ranchers, but honoring our dead was part of life. 

Once a year, we would load our old Chevy with buckets filled with stalks of iris, branches of lilacs, dark purple, lavender, and white, snowball branches, and tulips. These were the flowers that would be used to decorate the graves of our dead relatives.

I didn’t know my paternal grandparents.  They had died long before I was born.  Visiting their graves was my only memory of them and through those visits I learned about who they were from the stories my parents and aunts and uncles would tell. 

My Uncle Floyd and Aunt Reet (Ireta), who lived on Grandpa George’s old place outside of Oxford on the old highway.  Everyone called Oxford Hwy. and Westside Hwy. the old highway since US Highway 91/191 became official federal highways in 1926.  But Hwy 91 ran on the other side of the valley from Oxford, so everyone in Weston, Dayton, Clifton, and Oxford continued using the old highway. 

Uncle Floyd was ten years older than my dad, so Uncle Floyd and Aunt Reet acted as surrogate parents for my dad when he was a teenager.  They became more like grandparents to me.  I loved going to the farm.  Uncle Floyd and his boys ran a dairy and hauled the milk in milk cans via truck to the railroad siding for Oxford. I often got to ride in the buggy with Uncle Lee and go to the marshes in search of sand cranes, ibis, and swans. 

Aunt Reet was a cook at the local high school.  She was a wonderful baker and cook.  After Uncle Floyd died, she moved to a house in Clifton.  It was a very cool house.  It was a put-together-by-number house that was ordered from Sears & Roebuck in the early 1900’s, and it reflected the times, with its Victorian paint colors and front porch with fancy scroll brackets at the tops of the posts.

The weekend before Decoration Day, we would load up a cooler of sandwiches and drinks, along with shovels, rakes, and hoes, and head for Oxford Cemetery.  Back then, most cemeteries were not well cared for because there was no money to take care of them and generally no water for lawns or shrubbery.  We would spend Saturday cleaning away weeds and June grass, pulling or chopping away sage brush and cleaning up the graves of the dearly departed.  There were usually small rock boarders around each family plot.  The grave stones themselves were relatively large and some very ornate. 

(The Croshaw side of my family, my mother’s maternal grandparents, were from Oxford)

On Decoration Day, the extended family would meet at Uncle Floyd’s farm and we would talk for a while before heading to the cemetery to decorate the graves. All my aunts and uncles would come with loads of flowers as well. Some from florists, but most were home grown flowers.  Pink and white peonies were my personal favorites and I would help my parents pour water in to smaller tin cans and arrange various flowers in each.  Within an hour the family graves were covered with fresh blossoms. 

Oxford Cemetery is off the old highway, up a gravel road, on the side of Oxford Peak.  The mountain is a huge monolith in the marsh valley.  From our home in Inkom, we could look out our big picture window in the living room and see Oxford Peak in the distance, some 40 miles away.  My parents felt very contented to be able to see the place of the heritage every day upon just looking southward.

(Oxford Peak)

After decorating graves in Oxford, we would all return to the farm for lunch where Aunt Reet and all the women would serve a wonderful meal of fried chicken, potato salads, and ton of other foods and desserts.  The men would sit around and drink beer and smoke, while the women folk fixed food and then cleaned up the mess.

Later in the afternoon, after a nap, under the ash trees out in the yard, we would pack up our car and head across the valley to Swan Lake, where my mother was raised.  The small town was on the new Hwy 91, just south of Red Rock Pass.

(State historical marker on Hwy 91)

(The road in front is the old Oxford Hwy. off Hwy. 91/191)

(Monument at the top of this hill is a memorial to Capt. Jefferson Hunt, Mormon Battalion)

(Swan Lake Cemetery)

Swan Lake Cemetery is located up a gravel road just off the highway.  Atop the hill, you can see the entire Marsh Valley.  It’s a lovely spot.  My grandparents and several aunts and uncles are interred there.  My mother would have saved at least half of the flowers to decorate Croshaw and Carlson graves, as well as Gambles and Henderson graves, who were her aunts.  Back at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, we would sit in the kitchen and they would talk.  My dad would always take Grandpa Carlson on an expedition out to the barn to see his newest horse, but really it was a way for the two of them to get away and go to Thomas Merch to get a beer.

The day would end with me asleep in the backseat of the big old Chevy Belair.  Another successful day of family.

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[1] Claybourne, Joshua, Memorial Day, http://www.usmemorialday.org/?page_id=2, retrieved May 12, 2017.

[2] Hutchcroft, Anthony, Flanders Fields Music, http://www.flandersfieldsmusic.com/thepoem.html, retrieved May 12, 2017.