Ingram-Thurston: Remembering America’s heroic men and women on Memorial Day

To each reader Memorial Day may mean something different.

Perhaps it is the first long weekend that marks a long-awaited summer filled with potato salad, hot dogs and mom’s apple pie. For some with a strict fashion sense filled with tradition, it is now legal to wear white.

Maybe it’s the purchase of a red poppy that you tie around a button in solidarity. Perhaps you spend the weekend watching films like “Pearl Harbor,” “The Longest Day,” or “Apocalypse Now,” reminding yourself of the horror and incredible stress these fine men and women endured trying to defend us.

Or, maybe it is even more personal than that. Maybe Memorial Day is when your feelings of loss and awe come to the surface, as you relive the gallant and painful stories of those we gather to remember.

From my own childhood I have heard such stories at my older generation’s knee. I was shown pictures and learned of their battles but could only try to imagine the thoughts of these brave soldiers who were kept alive and immortal by the gift of memory.

My mother, whose family was from plantation owners from the South, would share a story told to her by her great Aunt Wilkinens, the story of Charles, a boy just seventeen when he left Virginia in high spirits to fight in the Civil War.

His Mama had knit him a gray and blue scarf that she said would look real nice with his uniform.

As the story goes, there had been so much ado about the boys leaving, you would have thought they were going to be gone for years, not the few weeks they thought it would take to put those northern boys straight.

He had only been on the road a few days, not enough to barely muddy his fine boots. There was a sound, like maybe dogs walking on dry leaves, barely enough to make his ear hairs tickle.

Charles fell off his horse like a leaf falling from a tree, and when his body was brought back, the whole family wore black in mourning.

My grandfather Bohr told my cousins and I a story of his grandfather, Nathan, who had gone to London for school and found himself in World War I.

His letters home were cheerful, he was eager to go to battle, he said. His fellow soldiers were more like a band of brothers. He was keen to get on with it.

Nathan’s body is over there, immortalized by one of a sea of white crosses. All my uncles fought in World War II and they all told stories of pals who did not make it.

Uncle Tom seemed almost guilty that he had survived, but every Memorial Day we heard each uncle’s list of fallen friends, and we would say, “Remember!”

Vietnam swiped across my high school graduating class with a chill. My friends were surfers, geeks or planning for a future — and I saw them all go to that war.

Fewer came back. And many of those who did were like shells of who they used to be.

Suddenly Memorial Day was no longer about history to me. It was about remembering my friends. Memorial Day changed forever.

During the Civil War loved ones brought homemade wreaths to the graves of loved ones when they could.

Honoring the dead is a custom as old as time, but when the dead is someone who placed their own life in jeopardy to fight for others, for their country, for their beliefs…these fallen men and women have always touched us in a unique way.

How does one adequately honor someone who was so selfless, whose life is a testament to the best traits in man?

That is why it is so important, and even mandatory that we remember them, especially on Memorial Day. This day, once known as Decoration Day, was borne out of the Civil War which ended 1865.

On May 5, 1968 General John Logan officially declared it with Order No. 11 as, “A day designated for the purpose of strewing flowers and decorations on graves of comrades who had died in defense of their country”.

The congressional passage of this National Holiday resulted in Memorial Day, which is now observed on the last Monday in May.

Our local VFW and American Legion will once more honor Memorial Day in a variety of ways. The community is invited to participate on Friday, May 28 by purchasing Buddy Pal Poppies from 9 a.m. until noon at Wal-Mart, the Post Office, Los Banos Drugs, Tractor Supply, Hobby Lobby and SaveMart.

The members of the VFW and American Legion will hold a Memorial Day Service on Monday, May 31, at 9:30 at our Los Banos Cemetery.

Once more our city will be honored with a parade with the symbolic waving of our grand flag in front of citizens’ homes and businesses.

It is an inspiring sight and I love looking out and seeing my flag each year.

This fundraiser for the VFW 2487 and American Legion 166 is a great effort done eight times a year. Your initial cost will be $100 for the first year and then reduced to $30 a year.

If you would like to be involved go to losbanosveterans.org and click the commemorative flag. The VFW and American Legion also have a project of a Community Plaque Wall outside the Los Banos Veterans Hall. People can purchase a marble plague in their beloved veteran’s name.

The person being honored need not be from Los Banos themselves, but must be connected with a person from Los Banos. To order your plaque please go to losbanosveterans.org.

The National Moment of Remembrance was passed as a resolution in December 2000. It states that at 3 p.m., local time, for all American to voluntarily and informally observe in their own way, a time of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to Taps.

While we pause to remember or perhaps listen to Taps, let us also think of Lieutenant-Colonel’s John McCrae’s haunting words from his 1915 poem ‘In Flanders Fields’: “We cherish too, the poppy red. That grows on fields where valor led. They seem to signal to the skies that the blood of heroes never dies.”