AOH Brothers & LAOH Sisters:
Memorial Day is upon us. I would respectfully request that all divisions & county boards take a moment to reflect on the sacrifices made by our AOH Veterans, past, and present as well as the sacrifices of their families. Our AOH Brothers as well as LAOH Sisters, continue to serve this great nation in all branches of the United States military. They serve in locations as distant as Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Korea, and other current global “hotspots.” Others in our ranks who continue to serve this great nation will, over the next few days, volunteer their time to place flags, and provide poppies to honor our Veterans. Our Veteran’s Hospitals provide treatment, not just to our Hibernian Veterans but to all Vets who gave so much. Our nursing homes, provide quarters to those Veterans who no longer can take care of themselves. Please, over these next few days, offer a prayer for those who have sacrificed so much for our continued freedom.
I have attached a brief history of Memorial Day below.
Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic.The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873.
However, Pennsylvania has it’s own claim on Memorial Day that is rather unique & worth a “read.”
Boalsburg, Pa. is a quaint little village situated in Centre County, Pa., just off Route 322, in the picturesque foothills of the Alleghenies. It’s only a dot on the map, and you as a casual driver might drive past it without even being aware that it is nestled there in the rolling valley beneath a coverlet of oaks and pines and cedars – were it not for a plain little marker by the side of the road: “Boalsburg. An American Village – Birthplace of Memorial Day.”
It was a pleasant Sunday and in the little community burial ground behind the village the pioneers of colonial times slept peacefully side by side with the recently fallen heroes of the Civil War. Emma Hunter by name, and her friend, Sophie Keller, chose to gather some garden flowers and to place them on the grave of her father Dr. Reuben Hunter, a surgeon in the Union Army, who died only a short while before. And it was this very same day than an older woman, Mrs. Elizabeth Meyer, elected to strew flowers on the grave of her son http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~pacentre/amos.htm Amos, who as a private in the ranks, had fallen on the last day of battle at Gettysburg.
And so the two with their friend met, kneeling figures at nearby graves, a young girl honoring her officer father, a young mother paying respects to her enlisted-man son, each with a basket of flowers which she had picked with loving hands. And they got to talking. The mother proudly told the girl what a fine young man her son had been, how he had dropped his farm duties and enlisted in the Union Army at the outbreak of the war, and how bravely he had fought.
The daughter respectfully took a few of her flowers as a token and placed them on the son’s grave. The mother in turn laid some of her freshly cut blooms on the father’s grave. These two women had found in their common grief a common bond as they knelt together in that little burial ground in Central Pennsylvania where Mount Nittany stands eternal guard over those who sleep there. Nor did they realize at the same time that their meeting had any particular significance – outside of their own personal lives; it was just that they seemed to lighten their burdens by sharing them. But as it happened these two women were participating in their first Memorial Day Service.
For the story goes that before the two women left each other that Sunday in October, 1864, they had agreed to meet again on the same day the following year in order to honor not only their own two loved ones, but others who now might have no one left to kneel at their lonely graves. During the weeks and months that followed the two women discussed their little plan with friends and neighbors and all heard it with enthusiasm. The report was that on July 4, 1865 – the appointed day – what had been planned as a little informal meeting of two women turned into a community service. All Boalsburg was gathered there, a clergymen – Dr. George Hall – preached a sermon, and every grave in the little cemetery was decorated with flowers and flags; not a single one was neglected.
It must have been such a scene as this that inspired Longfellow to write:
Your silent tents of green
We deck with flagrant flowers:
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be hours.
It seemed such a fitting and proper way of remembering those who had passed on that the custom became an annual event in Boalsburg, and one by one the neighboring communities adopted a similar plan of observing “Decoration Day” each spring. On May 5, 1868, just four years after that first meeting in the little burial ground, Gen. John A. Logan, then commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, isued an order, naming May 30, 1868, as a day “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country.” He signed the order “with the hope that it will be kept up from year to year.” And so it has.
Brothers and Sisters, since the late 1950′s on the Thursday before Memorial Day, 1,200 soldiers of the 3d U.S. Infantry place small American flags at each of the more than 260,000 gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They then patrol 24 hours a day during the weekend to ensure that each flag remains standing. In 1951, the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts of St. Louis began placing flags on the 150,000 graves at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery as an annual Good Turn, a practice that continues to this day. More recently, beginning in 1998, on the Saturday before the observed day for Memorial Day, the Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts place a candle at each of approximately 15,300 grave sites of soldiers buried at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park on Marye’s Heights. In 2004, Washington D.C. held its first Memorial Day parade in over 60 years.
In the language of our ancestors: “Dia ár veterans!” God Bless Our Veterans!!!!
A most sincere “Thank you” to all our AOH & LAOH Veteran’s! May God bless you all, & may our Lord, and Patrick, Our Patron Saint, keep you safely in the palm of his hand!!!!
In Friendship, Unity, and true Christian Charity,
Gary Duncan, President
Lackawanna County Ancient Order of Hibernians
