Memorial Day 2025

Don Surber Substack ^ | 26 May 2025 | Don Surber

[Rummyfan]

Memorial Day used to be on May 30th. Then Congress came in to help celebrate the day and shifted it all over the place by making it a Monday holiday. This was done to help federal workers and that’s fine with me, but it shows what congressional priorities are.

The Greeks and the Romans had Memorial Days too with Pericles holding one in Athens in 431 BC. The highlight was his somber speech that praised the sacrifice and valor of those killed in the Peloponnesian War.

2,452 years later, the man’s words ring true. His speech was so important that it is translated into most languages from the original Greek of antiquity. It ends:

Wherefore I do not now pity the parents of the dead who stand here; I would rather comfort them. You know that your dead have passed away amid manifold vicissitudes; and that they may be deemed fortunate who have gained their utmost honor, whether an honorable death like theirs, or an honorable sorrow like yours, and whose share of happiness has been so ordered that the term of their happiness is likewise the term of their life. I know how hard it is to make you feel this, when the good fortune of others will too often remind you of the gladness which once lightened your hearts.

..

Pericles likely inspired Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg. It is short and sweet.

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TOPICS: History; Miscellaneous; Politics; Society
KEYWORDS: elegy; memorialday; pericles

[Rummyfan]

May 1, 1865. Union soldiers given proper burial by the slaves they freed.

[chajin]

More than 150 years later, Olivia B. Waxman wrote:

About 10,000 people, mostly black residents, participated in the May 1 tribute, according to coverage back then in the Charleston Daily Courier and the New York Tribune. Starting at 9 a.m., about 3,000 black schoolchildren paraded around the race track holding roses and singing the Union song John Brown’s Body, and were followed by adults representing aid societies for freed black men and women. Black pastors delivered sermons and led attendees in prayer and in the singing of spirituals, and there were picnics. James Redpath, the white director of freedman’s education in the region, organized about 30 speeches by Union officers, missionaries and black ministers. Participants sang patriotic songs like America and We’ll Rally around the Flag and The Star-Spangled Banner. In the afternoon, three white and black Union regiments marched around the graves and staged a drill.

[Ahithophel]

Pericles likely inspired Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg. It is short and sweet.

Pericles went on for another 5 paragraphs. And while perhaps short, neither man’s words were sweet.

[Az Joe]

I’m hearing more about George Floyd this Memorial Day than the soldiers and sailors who died in service to America.

[PGalt]

Thanks for posting.

[Rummyfan]

On George Floyd:

Kurt Schlichter
@KurtSchlichter
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He was a drug addicted professional criminal made into a pagan god by leftist wine women. That’s his legacy. He’s garbage.

USA TODAY
@USATODAY
George Floyd’s legacy under siege as racial justice efforts lose ground, memorials removed

George Floyd's legacy?! WTF?