Decoration Day, then and now

Decoration Day, then and now

My grandmother called it Decoration Day and told stories of picnicking among the stones of her departed family members, in a prairie cemetery in Indian territory, in what is now east Oklahoma.

The History of Memorial Day

Three years after the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868, the head of an organization of Union veterans — the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) — established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. Maj. Gen. John A. Logan declared that Decoration Day should be observed on May 30. It is believed that date was chosen because flowers would be in bloom...