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Memorial Day Observance

We won’t be bringing you an ASPPA Connect newsletter on Monday due to the observance of Memorial Day, but we would like to share some little-known facts and background about the holiday.

  • Originally known as Decoration Day, Memorial Day originated in the years following the Civil War.

  • Union General John A. Logan, leader of a Northern Civil War veterans organization, on May 5, 1862 called for a nationwide day of remembrance later that month. “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.

  • May 30, the date of Decoration Day, was chosen because it wasn’t the anniversary of any particular battle.

  • Memorial Day — first known as Decoration Day — originally honored only those who died in the Civil War. But during World War I, the day began to commemorate American military personnel who died in all wars.

  • In 1968 the Uniform Monday Holiday Act was enacted, establishing Memorial Day as the last Monday in May in order to create a three-day weekend for federal employees, effective in 1971.

  • Memorial Day became an official federal holiday in 1971.

  • The “National Moment of Remembrance” resolution was enacted in Dec 2000; it asks that at 3:00 p.m. local time on Memorial Day that all Americans “voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to ‘Taps.’”

We’ll be back on Wednesday, June 1 with the next ASPPA Connect.