Memorial Day - NRRA Office Closed
The NRRA Offices are closed for the Memorial Day holiday.
What is Memorial Day?
“That Nation which respects and honors its dead, shall ever be respected and honored itself.”
– Brevet Lieut.-Col. Edmund B. Whitman, 1868
Did you know that the Civil War claimed more lives than any conflict in U.S. history? This required the establishment of the country’s first national cemeteries.
In the late 1860s, Americans in various towns and cities began holding tributes to these countless fallen soldiers during the Spring and decorated their graves with flowers. Although it is unclear where exactly this tradition originated, some records indicate that one of the earliest Memorial Day commemorations was organized by a group of formerly enslaved people in Charleston, South Carolina less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered in 1865. Despite this, the federal government declared Waterloo, New York, the official birthplace of Memorial Day in 1966.
Waterloo—which first celebrated the day on May 5, 1866—was chosen because it hosted an annual, community-wide event, during which businesses closed and residents decorated the graves of soldiers with flowers and flags.
Originally called Decoration Day, it was formalized by a "Memorial Day Order" issued by Grand Army of the Republic Commander-in-Chief John A. Logan in 1868. The modern proclamation calls on Americans "to observe Memorial Day by praying, according to their individual religious faith, for permanent peace."