The Town will hold a Memorial Day ceremony Monday at 8:30 a.m. in the Southern Shores Cemetery to honor U.S. personnel who died during military service in war or in peacetime.
The cemetery is located at 66 S. Dogwood Trail next to the Duck Woods Country Club.
Originally known as Decoration Day, Memorial Day was first recognized after the Civil War in response to the practice of communities and families decorating the graves of fallen soldiers, Union and Confederate, with flowers.
In 1868, the Grand Army of the Republic, a politically influential organization of Union veterans, issued the Memorial Day Act to establish a day on which the nation would honor those who died in wartime and decorate their graves with flowers.
The GAR chose May 30 for the ceremonial observance because the choicest variety of flowers would be available in the spring.
Since the post-Civil War period, Memorial Day has evolved nationally to honor and pay tribute to all military service members who died in any U.S. war, as well as during peacetime.
The name Memorial Day gradually became more common than Decoration Day after World War II, but it was not declared the official name by federal law until 1967.
In 1968, Congress changed the date of the holiday observance to the last Monday in May when it passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act to create several three-day holiday weekends, purportedly to benefit federal employees. The Act became law Jan. 1, 1971.
The Uniform Monday Holiday Act moved what was then known as Washington’s Birthday (February 22) permanently to a Monday in February and established Columbus Day as a permanent Monday federal holiday. (The Act did not create Presidents’ Day by combining Washington’s Birthday with Lincoln’s Birthday (February 12). Presidents’ Day—however it is punctuated—is not an official federal holiday.)
Congress also moved Veterans Day, formerly known as Armistice Day and created to honor those who served during World War I, from November 11 to the fourth Monday in October.
The change in the Veterans Day observance met with disfavor because World War I ended on November 11 with an armistice signed between the Allies and Germany. Congress reestablished the November 11 holiday in 1978.
Veterans Day, a name that supplanted Armistice Day in the 1950s, at the urging of veterans organizations, honors all military veterans of U.S. armed forces.
THE SOUTHERN SHORES BEACON, 5/24/25
The Southern Shores Beacon 