Dear List,   The following is an excerpt from a Washington Post editorial:   Memorial Day was, in its beginnings, a popular observance that developed spontaneously after the Civil War, when families began the custom of decorating the graves of their Union and Confederate dead on one particular day or another in springtime. These were people who could have had no illusions about the glories of war or the greatness of any Cause — not after approximately 620,000 dead and who knows how many more physically maimed, disabled or “casualties of the spirit.”   Memorial Day was not then, and is not today, about victories won, national glory or the greatness of the armed forces. It is essentially the fulfillment of a personal obligation to remember — to say of someone we knew, or loved or whose name we read on a plaque or whose troubled face we see in a long-ago documentary film: You lost all, or nearly all, before your time had come, but you shall not be forgotten.   Norm http://freepages.military.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~neworleans/victory_arch/one_soldier%27s_story.htm

That was beautiful, Norm.  Thanks so much for sharing. ________________________________ From: Norm Hellmers <n_d_hellmers@yahoo.com> To: "laorlean@rootsweb.com" <laorlean@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, May 28, 2012 9:30 AM Subject: [LAORLEAN] Memorial Day 2012 Dear List,   The following is an excerpt from a Washington Post editorial:   Memorial Day was, in its beginnings, a popular observance that developed spontaneously after the Civil War, when families began the custom of decorating the graves of their Union and Confederate dead on one particular day or another in springtime. These were people who could have had no illusions about the glories of war or the greatness of any Cause — not after approximately 620,000 dead and who knows how many more physically maimed, disabled or “casualties of the spirit.”   Memorial Day was not then, and is not today, about victories won, national glory or the greatness of the armed forces. It is essentially the fulfillment of a personal obligation to remember — to say of someone we knew, or loved or whose name we read on a plaque or whose troubled face we see in a long-ago documentary film: You lost all, or nearly all, before your time had come, but you shall not be forgotten.   Norm http://freepages.military.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~neworleans/victory_arch/one_soldier%27s_story.htm ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to LAORLEAN-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message