Something you should know. Today is Memorial Day. And I'm going to tell you a little more about Memorial Day right now, and I'm going to invite you to celebrate Memorial Day the right way with me a little bit later today. It's an annual observance that can be traced back to the end of the Civil War, where sadly we lost over a half a million people. Southern women would scatter spring flowers on the graves of both Southern Confederate soldiers but also Northern Union soldiers. In many cases,
these were their cousins and sometimes even brothers. The sad reality of a divided America, many places claimed to have held the original Memorial Day. You'll find communities like Warrington, Virginia, Columbus, Georgia, Savannah, Georgia, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Bowls Bill, Pennsylvania, and Waterloo, New York, all claiming that
Decoration Day or Memorial Day started there. Charleston, South Carolina, is another They had covered two hundred and fifty seven Union soldiers who had died at a prison camp there in May one, eighteen sixty v five former slaves organized a parade led by twenty eight hundred singing children, They prayed, they read Bible verses and saying spirituals, and they reburied the soldiers with honor as an act of gratefulness for
their ultimate sacrifice which gave them freedom. President James Garfield only made one executive order in eighteen eighty one, and that was to give government workers May thirtieth off so they could decorate the graves of those who died in the Civil War. In nineteen twenty one, President Warren Harding had the remains of an unknown soldier killed in France during World War One buried in the Tomb of the
Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetery. Inscribed on the tomb as the phrase here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God. Since nineteen twenty one, it has been the tradition of every president to lay a wreath on the tomb of the unknown Soldier. It's guarded twenty four hours a day, three hundred and sixty five days a year, the number twenty one being the highest salute
the century. Takes twenty one steps, faces the tomb for twenty one seconds, turns and pauses for twenty one seconds, then retraces his steps the number twenty one has explained on the US Army Center of Military History website. It goes back to wartime ships who fired seven gun salutes.
They believe the seven guns were tied to biblical significance, but land batteries had a greater supply of gunpowder, so instead of seven, they would do three shots of seven, which gives us the twenty one gun salute, the highest honor our nation renders. On Memorial Day. Nineteen twenty three, President Calvin Coolidge said there can be no peace with the forces of evil. Peace comes only through the establishment
of the supremacy of the forces of good. In nineteen fifty eight, President Eisenhower placed soldiers in the tomb from World War II and the Korean War, And in nineteen sixty eight, one hundred years after the first observance, Memorial Day was moved to the last Monday in May, and that is today. It's a day to honor those who gave their all for our country. You're welcome to join me today at noon at the Veterans Memorial Cemetery. I have more info about that event at Facebook dot com.
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