William Herbert "Skip" Boyer, 32°
15817 N 6th Place, Phoenix, Arizona 85022
Skip.Boyer@bestwestern.com

Amid all the sales and barbecues, something has been lost about the spirit of Memorial Day.

It's Memorial Day weekend, the official beginning of summer. We herald its arrival with sales which enable us to purchase sport utility vehicles, mattresses, and beer at discounted Memorial Day Sale prices. When we have finished shopping, we head for the lake, the cabin, or just kick back, fire up the grill, and burn a piece of meat on the backyard grill. After all, it's Memorial Day.

A slightly discordant note may appear on page one of the local newspaper. Usually, this takes the form of a small child placing flowers on the grave of a loved one or a bugler in worn uniform attempting "Taps" for the 10-second television sound bite. It's just as likely, though, to be a picture of somebody turning hamburgers on a grill.

From the tone of the first two paragraphs, you may have gathered I think something is missing. It's true. I think we've lost something as we've raced faster and faster down the years. I'd like to recapture it, because it reminds me of days when America was younger and things were less confusing, when we moved at a slower pace, and when we could still remember whence we came and whither we were traveling.

It hasn't been this way for long. For the record, it didn't start out as Memorial Day. It was Decoration Day. That's how I first met it. My grandmother held it close to her heart. (More about her in a moment.) On May 5, 1868, General John Logan proclaimed a holiday in his General Order No. 11. This holiday was to be called Decoration Day, a day for family members to visit the grave of those fallen during the Civil War and decorate their graves with flowers. It was first observed on May 30, 1868, three years after the war that pitted brother against brother and cleaved the nation to its soul. It was the first visible step in the healing process.

In 1882, the name was changed to Memorial Day. That didn't matter to Grandmother Boyer. She referred to it as Decoration Day until her death in 1956. And, this may surprise you, it wasn't declared a federal national holiday until 1971, to be held on the last Monday of May annually. That's when the mattress and car ads began to take it over, and the real meaning of the day started to fade.

I'm glad Grandma didn't see it. Some of my very first memories as a child, back in the late 1940s or so, drift lazily around Decoration Day. It began with Grandma instructing us, my brother and me, to go into the garden and pick some flowers. This meant a mixture of irises, peonies, and lilies of the valley. These were arranged in small bouquets, stems wrapped in tin foil, ready for transport to the cemetery. The weather was usually wonderful, a Nebraska–Missouri River Valley spring.

I remember Grandma escorting me through the family burial plot, introducing me to the residents, one by one. Here was her husband, my grandfather. There, her brother. Over there, her father. Weathered Masonic symbols marked each stone. In the background, stood a tall column with a statue of a soldier atop it. Nearby, a marble angel pointed heavenward. In time, I would come to know the history of each resident of our small plot, and this helped me understand my family and its place in the westward development of a nation.

When I reached 45, those memories came back when I visited Prospect Hill Cemetery, Omaha's pioneer cemetery. Since then, I've helped write a book about it. My visit occurred on Memorial Day weekend, and there was a special ceremony going on around the flag pole in the center of the cemetery. Off to the left was the tall column marking the graves of soldiers from the Spanish–American War. The marble angel, with its hand now broken off, was nearby. And there were the low limestone obelisks with their worn Square and Compasses marking the final homes of one side of my family—just as I remembered it, just as Grandma showed me on a Decoration Day a very long time ago.

When I return to my hometown of Omaha now, I try to visit the cemetery, and I take along flowers, lilies of the valley, if I can find them, for the graves of Grandma and Mom. My visits don't usually coincide with Memorial Day, but that's all right. I don't need a national holiday to remember those whose sacrifices helped secure life and liberty for me and my family. And I am continually grateful to the Great Architect for each one of them.

Still, the feeling that we've lost something behind the sales and burger smoke continues to gnaw at me.

William H. Boyer is the Director, Executive Communications, Best Western International, Inc. He is a member of Paradise Valley–Silver Trowel Lodge No. 29, Phoenix, Arizona, and serves as editor of the Lodge's Trestle Board. Brother Boyer is a member of the Philalethes Society and writes a regular column in the Society's popular magazine. A Chevalier of the Order of DeMolay, a member of the Brotherhood of the Blue Forget-Me-Not and of the Scottish Rite Bodies of Phoenix, Arizona, he is a native of Omaha, Nebraska, and holds the prestigious Accredited Business Communicator (ABC) designation from the International Association of Business Communicators. Brother Boyer has earned more than 70 regional and national awards for his writing and editorial work.