Memorial Day

Thank you.

Family Reunion Time

Margie: Edna, you know our family reunion is coming up in June. Remember how Daddy always told us that we had to go as long as we were breathing?

Well, you can go alone this year. Old Margie knows when it's time to quit.

Edna: Oh no you don't! I'm not going to face that bunch of piranhas alone! You'd best get yourself out of whatever funk you're in and come and face the music with me.

Margie: Sister, don't pretend that you don't recall how you embarrassed me last year. Right in front of Mama and Daddy's graves too.

That gentleman walked up and simply said he'd gone to school with you so he knew your age. Lordy, it was like waving a red flag at a bull. You rared back your purse and told him you'd knock him to Kingdom come if he told your age. You have no shame.

Edna: Margie, you must have been tippling again because that was surely not me you're remembering. That was Aunt Biddy, you idiot! So you can just quit your whining about me shaming you, because Lord knows it didn't happen the way you're telling it.

I thought for sure she was going to pull that man's hair out.

Margie: Hair? I've pulled my own out having to listen to all your squawking day and night.

Edna: I'm fine with agreeing to a 24-hour wall of silence if it will get you to stop filling my ear with half-truths. Agreed?

Margie: Make it 48.

Memorial Day 2008

American Memorial Day (originally known as Decoration Day) first began as a tribute to fallen Civil War soldiers. Various towns throughout America had been honoring their lost veterans for several years after the official end of the war. However, it was first widely recognized and celebrated on May 30, 1868, by proclamation of General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic.

“In 1966, the federal government, under the direction of President Lyndon Johnson, declared Waterloo, N.Y., the official birthplace of Memorial Day. They chose Waterloo—which had first celebrated the day on May 5, 1866—because the town had made Memorial Day an annual, community-wide event during which businesses closed and residents decorated the graves of soldiers with flowers and flags.”

In 1971, US Congress declared that Memorial Day would be observed as a national holiday, which would be celebrated on the last Monday in May. And after World War I, many communities across America began to use Memorial Day to honor those soldiers who died in all of America’s wars.

Please take a moment today to say some words of thanks to all soldiers, living or dead, who have fought bravely and sacrificed so much to protect our freedoms.