Memorial Day 2009

NEW YORK – Another Memorial Day has come and gone: Cookouts, baseball games and parades. And that's okay; but let's not forget the real purpose of the day: To remember the men and women of our armed services who have died at war.

A soldier sits at a grave in Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day

At Arlington National Cemetery, soldiers, sailors and marines from the U.S. Army Old Guard placed flags at the grave stones there. It took thirteen hundred soldiers three hours to place a flag at each of the more than 300,000 gravestones.

Thousands of visitors paid their respects, not only at Arlington, but at the Long Island National Cemetery, the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, in Honolulu, and of course at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C., and all across the country.

There are freshly placed flags flying over the graves of civil war veterans in Green Mount Cemetery in Montpelier and elsewhere. After all, this holiday was first enacted as Decoration Day, to commemorate Union soldiers from the Civil War, and later expanded to honor casualties of any military action.

But somehow Memorial Day has evolved to mark the unofficial start of summer. So let us never forget that, while we cookout and visit with our families, other families are separated by war. On Memorial Day 2009, members of our military deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan continued their service, in the full knowledge that the next Memorial Day could also honor them.

That is why, when I put my children to bed at night, I tell them about the men and women who have died to protect their freedom. I tell them not just on Memorial Day, but often. I want them to honor those who have sacrificed their lives so that we can live ours in freedom.

-Jami Floyd, In Session anchor