The most poignant Memorial Day ceremony I've ever attended were in the years I lived in Old Greenwich, CT. The Town 'celebrated' the Day with a Parade of Townfolk and Organizations: from Little League to Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts to Garden Clubs to Veteran Organizations amid a myriad of 'Floats'.
Following the Parade, onlookers assembled in a meadow of Binney Park.
Speakers read the names of all Servicemen (and now Women), from Greenwich, who gave their lives in each of America's Wars. A drum-roll preceded each set of names.
The Ceremony included a 21-Gun Salute, was capped with recital of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and ended with Taps.
The Day was quintessential Americana at its absolute best.
Mr. Lincoln's Address has always symbolized to me the perfect tone to remember and reflect upon Memorial Day:
Please forgive me if this is too long.
The Gettysburg Address:
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate-we can not consecrate-we can not hallow-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
