
One more Memorial Day and one more summer is upon us. The two go hand in hand. The holidayy is the starting line for people to head to their summer homes, their first weekend at the beach or the mountains and to have lost that weight so you can cram yourself into that speedo or bikini.
It is the day that gay men started three months ago at the gym preparing for the summer so those six packs glisten in the summer sun. They strut along the beaches proud of their success and if they are especially 'gifted' they walk naked to show off all their assets!
When I was growing up we all went as a family to place flowers on the graves of grandparents, sons, daughters and fathers and mothers. Now, most of my friends are cremated and no longer is that pilgrimage made by survivors of loved ones.
Few anymore go to cemeteries to pay respect to the dead in their families. Hardly anyone tunes to television to watch the President lay the wreath at Arlington. The tens of thousands of headstones that cover the hillsides of that sacred ground receive on this day a single American flag so the fallen warriors are not forgotten. They didn't make the policies that called them to war but all answered the call of their nation.

Americans simply don't know the history of Memorial Day.
In fact, the first known observance was by African-Americans in South Carolina after the war.
Wikipedia describes that very first Memorial Day:
The first well-known observance of a Memorial Day-type observance after the Civil War was in Charleston, South Carolina on May 1, 1865. During the war, Union soldiers who were prisoners of war had been held at the Charleston Race Course; at least 257 Union prisoners died there and were hastily buried in unmarked graves.Together with teachers and missionaries, black residents of Charleston organized a May Day ceremony in 1865, which was covered by the New York Tribune and other national papers. The freedmen cleaned up and landscaped the burial ground, building an enclosure and an arch labeled, "Martyrs of the Race Course." Nearly ten thousand people, mostly freedmen, gathered on May 1 to commemorate the war dead. Involved were about 3,000 school children newly enrolled in freedmen's schools, mutual aid societies, Union troops, black ministers, and white northern missionaries. Most brought flowers to lay on the burial field. Today the site is used as Hampton Park. Years later, the celebration would come to be called the "First Decoration Day" in the North.
David W. Blight described the day:
"This was the first Memorial Day. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina. What you have there is black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the war had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.”
The first official Memorial Day didn't occur until 1868:
Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. 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 South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead 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). It is now celebrated in almost every State on the last Monday in May (passed by Congress with the National Holiday Act of 1971 (P.L. 90 - 363) to ensure a three day weekend for Federal holidays), though several southern states have an additional separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead: January 19 in Texas, April 26 in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; May 10 in South Carolina; and June 3 (Jefferson Davis' birthday) in Louisiana and Tennessee
So as you tuck yourself just perfectly into that speedo and you celebrate tomorrow being the beginning of summer. Take just a minute and remember those who came before you. Don't forget the fallen warriors. Don't forget the tens of thousands who died of AIDS. Don't forget those that made it possible for you to walk along that beach.
They deserve to be remembered.