Let's take time on this Memorial Day to honor those who died in service to our nation [editorial]
THE ISSUE In 1868, three years after the Civil War ended, the leader of an organization of Union veterans established Decoration Day â as Memorial Day originally was known â as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. According to Utahâs Deseret News, one of the very first Memorial Day celebrations may have been even earlier, on May 1, 1865, when Black workmen gathered at a Charleston, South Carolina, racecourse and club that the Confederates had converted into an outdoor prison. That newspaper cited Yale University historian David W. Blight, w...