City Council remembers and honors Memorial Day

Memorial Day is observed on the last Monday of May to honor those that made the supreme sacrifice while serving in the U.S. military. After the Civil War, Maj. Gen. John A. Logan, the head of a Union veteran organization, established Decoration Day on May 30 as a time for people to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers.



By the late 1860s, many different localities around the country were holding their own springtime tributes to fallen soldiers and the war dead, and decorating their graves with flowers. The first large observance of Decoration Day was held in 1868 at the Arlington National Cemetery.



Decoration Day continued to be observed on the local level, and in 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May, and the change went into effect in 1971.



On Memorial Day, the Council and people all around the country honor the more than 1.1 million American military personnel who made the supreme sacrifice for their country while serving in uniform.



Boston has a number of events on Memorial Day, one of the most prominent being the annual flag garden in the Boston Common, where tens of thousands of American flags are placed to commemorate fallen soldiers dating back to the Revolutionary War.



This week, the Council passed a resolution commemorating Memorial Day, honoring those who have made the supreme sacrifice for this country. Their bravery and sacrifice will never be forgotten.