Memorial Day with Arlington National Cemetery
Memorial Day gets marketed like a party, but the real story is heavier and more human. We’re joined by Allison Finkelstein, Senior Historian at Arlington National Cemetery, to trace Memorial Day back to its first name: Decoration Day. From Arlington’s creation during the Civil War to the first official annual observance of National Decoration Day in 1868, we talk about how public rituals, flowers, and community grief shaped the way the United States remembers its war dead.
Then we slow down and look at remembrance, one name at a time. Allison shares the story of Private Sylvester Ducket of the 369th Infantry, the Harlem Hellfighters, and how a headstone can open a door into archives, family choices, and long-delayed recognition. We also discuss Anita Campos, a Spanish-American War nurse contracted before the Army Nurse Corps existed, and what her burial at Arlington says about the service that the government didn’t always fully name or reward. Along the way, we unpack Arlington’s history of segregation by race and rank and why the cemetery’s landscape still helps us see that past.
We also get practical about what Memorial Day can look like now: Arlington’s Flags In tradition, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and Flowers of Remembrance, which invites the public to place a flower in a powerful act of collective memory. If you teach civics or history, Alison explains free educational resources from Arlington National Cemetery, including lesson plans, primary source activities, and upcoming virtual visits that bring the site to your classroom.
Subscribe for more conversations that make civics feel real, share this with a teacher or veteran in your life, and leave a review so more listeners can find us. What’s one way you plan to observe Memorial Day with intention this year?
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1 SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Civics in Year.
I am so excited to have a wonderful historian friend on to
talk about Memorial Day.
We have the senior historian from Arlington National Cemetery
with us, Alison Finkelstein.
And Allison and I met actually a while ago.
We did a conference, the uh American Historical Association.
We did a panel together on how to bring history into
classrooms.
So, Allison, thank you so much for coming on our podcast and
for talking about Memorial Day with us.
What else do you want to tell listeners about what you do at
Arlington?
SPEAKER_01: Well, first, thank you so much for having me.
And I just want to congratulate you as well, Dr.
Evans.
It's such a great accomplishment earning earning your doctorate
on top of everything else that you do.
And I was so excited to see that news, and I'm really happy to be
able to talk to you about the podcast.
Yes, so I'm Senior Historian at Arlington National Cemetery.
My title technically is Senior Historian for Army National
Military Cemeteries, because we have two sites under our
stewardship: Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, and then
the Soldiers and Airmen's Home National Cemetery in Washington,
D.C.
But of course, more people are familiar with Arlington National
Cemetery.
Arlington was created in 1864 during the midst of the American
Civil War, as the fatalities were mounting from both combat
and disease, particularly in the Washington, D.C.
area and the surrounding Northern Virginia area, the U.S.
Army was running out of burial space for those war dead.
They had seized the Arlington property at the start of the war
in 1861 for strategic defense of the nation's capital.
And they started burying the dead at Arlington.
And there was very little at the time that could have given those
soldiers any indication of what Arlington was going to become.
And it was, in fact, what we now call Memorial Day that really
changed the trajectory of Arlington's history.
And I'm excited to talk about that with you.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
So my first question then is how has the meaning and public
understanding of Memorial Day changed from its origins all the
way to today?
SPEAKER_01: There has been a lot of great research done on the
history of Memorial Day, and there are a few competing
stories about it.
Arlington, our stake in this, is that the cemetery was the first
venue for the very first annual National Decoration Day
observance.
Because as you hear me speak, I will refer to Memorial Day in
its earliest iterations as Decoration Day.
That was its first name.
So we're not saying that the first ever Decoration Day
happened at Arlington.
As many other historians have written, including David Blight,
there were many ad hoc ceremonies and events that were
essentially decoration day observances that were happening
around the country before the 1868 event at Arlington National
Cemetery when General John Logan, a U.S.
veteran and member of Congress at the time, who was serving as
the president of the Grand Army of the Republic, the GAR, for
Civil War buffs out there, the largest and most powerful U.S.
Army Civil War veterans organization.
In 1868, General Logan made a declaration that declared
Decoration Day to happen in May of that year, and the first
official ceremony took place at Arlington.
And it was a much different type of ceremony in 1868.
It involved speeches on the steps of the Arlington House.
There was a procession of orphans who walked from the
house to the tomb of the Civil War unknowns, to the gravesites
in the cemetery, and decorated those graves with flowers.
And that's why it was called initially Decoration Day.
It was about coming together in the springtime to show through
flowers and plants and natural life that the dead were still
being remembered.
And we talk about this a lot at Arlington, particularly on
Memorial Day weekend during some special events, which I can
share later.
Memorial Day slash decoration day is really what started to
elevate Arlington status because at first the cemetery was no
different than any of the other Civil War era national
cemeteries.
This was the first time that the U.S.
military actually took responsibility for burying the
war dead, which is kind of hard to believe today because it's
such an important part of our culture, right?
It's hard to imagine that before the Civil War, there were not
national cemeteries like we think of them.
So during the Civil War, places like Antietam National Cemetery,
what is now Soldiers and Airmen's Home National Cemetery,
obviously not with the airmen in there at the time of the Civil
War.
Gettysburg National Cemetery, the site of Lincoln's famous
Gettysburg Address.
These were all part of a newly created national network of
military cemeteries.
And Arlington was just one of those.
It was no different from any of the other cemeteries.
And it was that 1868 Decoration Day event that started to
differentiate Arlington.
As that event became more prominent, the cemetery's
stature rose.
An amphitheater, which we now call Tanner Amphitheater, was
constructed, I believe it was in 1873, to be a beautiful,
picturesque venue for that ceremony.
And Civil War veterans, once they were allowed to be buried
at the cemetery, wanted to be buried within view of that
amphitheater.
So that's one of the reasons why in our sections one and sections
two, which are not the first and section, second sections at the
cemetery, just to make it confusing.
That's why there's so many elaborate private markers,
markers paid for by the families of the war dead instead of just
using the government-issued headstones.
And it's really the time period when we get so many of these
famous generals and admirals of the Civil War era choosing to be
buried at Arlington and starting to make us more special than the
rest.
SPEAKER_00: So, what would be some of the lesser-known stories
of service members that help us better understand the human
impact of military sacrifice?
SPEAKER_01: This is a really hard question, Liz.
I feel as though with the over 420,000 service members and
their dependents buried at Arlington, with the number
changing daily since there are funerals happening right now, I
always feel as though I don't want to put any discredit on any
of those people by not selecting them for a question like this.
So it does, it does always feel like a responsibility when I'm
asked.
So the first one, the first two I think are a little bit lesser
known.
The first one is certainly not well known.
The first person I want to talk about is Sylvester Ducket, who
is buried in section 19 of the cemetery.
And he was a member of the 369th Infantry, famously known as the
Harlem Hellfighters or Harlem's Rattlers of the 93rd Division
during the First World War.
This was a segregated African-American division.
The United States military was segregated by rank until 1948
when President Truman desegregated the military.
So in 2025, the 369th, the Harlem Hell Fighters, were
actually awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the
U.S.
Congress, which had been in the works for many, many years.
They were highly awarded by the French, but were not given as
much recognition by the United States.
So the Congressional Gold Medal was an effort by their
modern-day supporters and Congress to try to right that
wrong.
And in the lead up to that, I started doing some more research
on the Harlem Hellfighters at Arlington.
And I decided to just take a walk around section 19 and see
who I could find on the headstones there.
Headstones are primary sources, they are artifacts that
historians, teachers, and students can use for research.
So instead of going to records or a book, I just went right out
there, put on my hiking boots, and got out into the section.
And I chose section 19 because that is one of the segregated
sections at Arlington.
Arlington was segregated by race and by rank until 1949, that
year when Truman desegregated the military.
So section 19 is a section for African American enlisted men,
primarily those who died overseas during World War I and
were then repatriated, though not entirely.
There are others who are buried there.
So I looked around and I wrote down and took photos of the
graves of men from the 369th, and I started digging into them
using Ancestry in Fold III and other records databases, and I
focus in on Sylvester Ducket because he was so young.
I believe, if I'm remembering correctly, he was only 19 when
he was killed.
He was from Washington, D.C.
His name is actually also memorialized and inscribed on
the D.C.
War Memorial, which is located on the National Mall.
And I was able to find some documents about how when he
joined, he didn't tell his mother, and he didn't have his
mother's permission, per se, to be involved in the military.
But he went over and he served with this unit anyway, and he
lost his life during the war and was repatriated, and it it got
me thinking about a few things.
First, it got me thinking about all of those other men and women
in the cemetery whose graves I have walked by and have not
researched their stories.
You asked about lesser-known stories of service and
sacrifice.
Sylvester Ducket is one example among truly hundreds of
thousands.
Every grave you go to at Arlington, you can find a story.
And the other thing I thought about was I know as a historian
of the First World War that the next of kin of those who died,
the mother, father, or a spouse, they had the choice of where to
bury their loved one.
They could bury them in a permanent overseas American
military cemetery, they could bury them at Arlington, they
could bury them in a family or church cemetery.
His mother chose to bury him at Arlington.
Was that because it was easier for her to visit from her home
in Washington, D.C.
What went into that choice?
There is a way I could try to find out through the burial case
records.
Unfortunately, I was not able to get to the National Archives at
St.
Louis to see what's what's in that file, but I hope to one day
to see if there's any correspondence from his mother,
as there I have found in many other cases.
So I wanted to bring up Private Sylvester Ducket.
SPEAKER_00: And now I'm like, I wonder, because I do know that
my great-grandmother was his next of kin, his sister, because
his parents had passed.
And so now I'm wondering, I'm wondering that.
Like, did she have to make this choice and why did she make it?
And I wonder what the, you know, that kind of correspondence is.
It is so interesting too that Arlington itself holds that
history, holds the segregation that, like you said, until
President Truman in 1949, like that's what it was.
And I would have, you know, I've I can't count how many times
I've been to Arlington and never knew that.
So that is it's interesting too that his name isn't the World
War I Memorial on the Mall.
Like there is that kind of connection.
SPEAKER_01: There's so many things to unpack here.
So for the the memorial on the mall, that is the District of
Columbia World War Memorial.
And it was placed there long before, obviously, the World War
II Memorial or many of those other memorials.
So that was just the district's local town memorial.
And of course, the Washington Monument was there and the
landscape was changing around the time that it was placed.
But it's a very fascinating memorial to go to because it
truly is a local memorial that is embedded into the landscape
of the National Mall.
It's also a living memorial, so it's a bandstand, and that's its
living memorial function.
Okay, to go back briefly to your family connection, and you can
tell me to stop going down this rabbit hole if you want me to.
It was definitely your great grandmother.
It was her choice.
So that was up to the family to have him buried at the Meuse
Sargon American Cemetery.
So if I ever get back to those records at St.
Louis, by the way, folks listening, they used to be at
the National Archives in College Park and were much more
accessible to those of us in DC.
And then they uh they made a little relocation to St.
Louis, but those files, the barrel case files, should have
the correspondence between the next of kin detailing why they
made that choice.
And if your great great-grandmother went on the
Gold Star Mother's Pilgrimage, that would also be documented in
there as well.
SPEAKER_00: And again, it's so interesting because I do have
the letter from the chaplain to my great-grandmother, like, you
know, talking about, you know, how you know he meant so much to
his squadron and just that.
And it's it is really cool that the archives holds this and
that, you know, Arlington holds this, and even like you say,
overseas, like all of this history is there and it holds
it.
So you brought up Sylvester.
Do you have another one?
SPEAKER_01: Again, this is so hard.
I want to talk about somebody who died in the line of duty but
was not actually officially in the military.
And that is the name of a Spanish-American War nurse,
Anita Campos, who is buried in section 21.
During the Spanish-American War, the U.S.
Army Nurse Corps had not yet been created.
So there was this great need for trained nurses who, around the
time of the Spanish-American War, 1898, were primarily women.
So the U.S.
Army actually contracted trained civilian nurses to serve as Army
nurses, essentially the same as a civilian contractor today.
So these women, many of them were stationed in the U.S., but
many of them actually went overseas, like Anita Campos, and
she died of malaria in Cuba.
And she and the other nurses who served in the Spanish-American
War, even though they were not officially in the Army, they
were eligible for burial at Arlington.
And that was because of a group of Civil War nurses who the year
before the Spanish-American War had been successful in being
able to get legislation passed to enable them to be buried at
Arlington based on their own service, even though they were
not officially in the Army, because women were not allowed
to serve in the Army and they were serving.
I argue they were serving the Army, even though they were
outside of the official military structure.
And there's many stories like that of who many historians like
me argue were female service members, even if the government
did not recognize them as female service members.
This continued through World War I and World War II.
SPEAKER_00: So we go back to the segregation piece.
What I mean I think America in general too and DC has it is
very rare to just have this history there, right?
To have this there are segregated how how did Arlington
kind of deal with that then after Truman was like military
is desegregated, you know, that executive order kind of comes
out.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so because Arlington was segregated by both
race and rank, so enlisted versus officer until 1948, it
did take some time to transition away from that.
But there is a real importance at Arlington and other
cemeteries of always honoring the dead and not moving the
dead, right?
Respecting the dead.
So there was no movement of any graves.
And what that means is that Arlington is one of a small
segment of historic sites where you can actually still see on
the landscape what segregation looked like.
So when you go to section 19 where Sylvester Ducett is
buried, and you read those headstones with a little bit of
information about the history of the military during World War I,
you can begin to see written on those headstones what African
American service members did during the war.
There were many combat veterans, yes, like Sylvester Ducett and
the members of the 369th and of the other the other infantry
division that served in combat, though they served under the
French, not with the Americans.
But you'll also see headstones with abbreviations for
stevedors, people who worked at the ports, for labor battalions,
for the Quartermaster Corps, many of the service members who
were actually digging the overseas graves and building the
cemetery, like where your great uncle Great Great Uncle is
there.
Sorry.
Many of the men were in segregated units of the army
doing that hard labor.
So it gives you a picture of what military service looked
like in a segregated military.
And particularly for students and teachers utilizing our
education materials, which we can talk about later, I'm sure.
We try to guide people so that when they walk around, they can
read the sections.
They can get a sense of what they are seeing, start to look
at the clues on those headstones, and actually analyze
and think about what it means to see sections that are still
somewhat segregated.
Now, there's been a lot more burials in those sections where
the cemetery is always trying to utilize space wisely.
So they are not completely segregated anymore, some of
them, but you can still see it.
And that's very rare to be able to see.
And it's part of our past.
And this is a place where you can actually stop and think
about it and engage in what did it mean to serve in a segregated
military during World War I or World War II, during the Civil
War, the Spanish-American War?
There's a lot of questions I think that educators can
consider.
Yes.
SPEAKER_00: So what traditions or practices best capture the
original purpose of Memorial Day, and why do they still
matter today?
SPEAKER_01: I'm really glad you asked this question because our
team gets very frustrated every year around Memorial Day because
you turn on the radio and you turn on the TV, and all you hear
and see are advertisements for Memorial Day sale or get
prepared for your Memorial Day barbecue.
It's the official start of summer.
That is not what Memorial Day is about.
Memorial Day is a solemn holiday, an observance, really.
I even feel it's a federal holiday, but sometimes I I feel
uncomfortable even calling it a holiday.
That sounds too joyful.
It is a solemn observance, a a day for remembrance rites for
those who served and lost their lives in battle, for those who
lost their lives later on due to their military service, or even
for some families and communities to remember those
who are no longer with us and died peacefully.
Its origins, as we talked about earlier, are in the American
Civil War.
So when we recognize Memorial Day, we are linked to our
nation's costliest conflict.
And we really want to remind people of what this day is
about.
That's why it's the most important weekend of the year
for our whole team at the cemetery.
Particularly for many people outside of the History Office,
the horticulture team work so hard to get the grounds looking
meticulous for Memorial Day.
All of the operations and facilities teams are doing
everything they can to ensure that the facilities are ready
for an influx of people to make sure that we are prepared to
host families who are coming to their loved ones' grave for a
yearly pilgrimage, maybe.
Can talk about, but the wider cemetery team, as well as the
military district of Washington, does a couple things that really
harken back to what Memorial Day or Decoration Day is about.
The old guard in the week before Memorial Day places a flag at
every grave, and we call this flags in.
And this is a really meaningful tradition because it is
decorating the grave, not with flowers, but with a flag of the
country for which these people served.
And the flag to me is a little bit more long, it's a little
longer lasting than the flowers.
So by the time Memorial Day is over, that flag is still
looking, if not pristine, it's it's still looking in a state
that honors the service member buried there.
And it's it's a really moving sight when you see all of those
flags.
They also place flags at the graves of the unknown soldiers
at the tomb of the unknown soldier.
So Flags In is a really big part of it.
The National Memorial Day observance that takes place on
Memorial Day itself, when the president or another senior
government leader lays a wreath at the tomb of the unknown
soldier, that is something that has been taking place for so
long.
Since 1868.
Now, you know, since Memorial Amphitheater was opened in 1920,
it's it's taking place at Memorial Amphitheaters.
There's this unbroken line of observances there with
incredible historic photos of every president from the time
photography was was being used to capture those ceremonies
after they started.
And then for the past, oh gosh, I think since 2022, the cemetery
has also had a new tradition.
And it's called Flowers of Remembrance Day.
This was inspired by something that we did in 2021 when we
observed the centennial of the tomb of the unknown soldier.
A suggestion was made by a group of former tomb guards to do a
flower ceremony at the tomb on the exact days that the World
War I unknown soldier had been given the honor of laying in
state in the Capitol Rotunda.
And when that happened, over 90,000 people came to pay their
respects, which is a a really big amount of people in 1921,
before Twitter or podcasts.
So for the first time in decades, the cemetery allowed
the public to walk on the plaza in front of the tomb and place a
flower there.
And it was so popular that leadership made the decision to
do it annually, but do it on Memorial Day weekend.
So I've been able to lay a flower every year, and I am
moved to tears each time.
I highly encourage anybody who is in the DC area, please join
us.
It's on the Sunday of Memorial Day this year.
I believe that's the 24th of May.
It is free, it's open to the public.
You don't need to bring a flower.
We have flowers for you, and you get to be up close to the tomb.
And it's it's very powerful.
So that is really hearkening back to the original intent of
decoration day, decorating the graves of the dead with flowers.
And to try and drive that message home, our team's role on
that day is twofold.
We do a short lecture about the history of decoration day in the
Bowl of Memorial Amphitheater, and then we also offer a walking
tour where we go backwards through time from the present
day, taking people from their experience of having just laid
that flower at the tomb all the way back.
We walk to Arlington House to trace how decoration day slash
memorial day evolved at Arlington.
And I really encourage anybody again, please join us.
It's free.
We would love to have you.
And we find it's a way that we can try and impress upon people
what this holiday is about.
But if you can't come to DC, there's still a lot of ways you
can honor Memorial Day at home.
Our education program has a lot of resources on Memorial Day and
Veterans Day that are aimed at students and teachers.
But I would say if there's a military cemetery by you, go
there that day.
If you know a military veteran, go and talk to them about their
experience.
Do an active service, go volunteer.
Is there a group of veterans?
Is there a retirement home or a nursing home where you can go
and donate some of your time?
That's really what Memorial Day is about.
It's not about the barbecues.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad you brought that up because I think
that especially military families like have that
understanding.
So I do want to talk a little bit more about your education
program.
So I'm in Arizona and I've been lucky enough to go to Arlington
many times.
And when you're talking about, you know, the team of the
unknown soldier, I mean, it always, as you were telling the
story about like laying flowers, like I was getting teary.
But for teachers and for students and for homeschool, or
just for the general public that's like, this is really
cool.
I want to learn more.
Can you tell me a little bit more about your education
programs that kind of just bring Arlington to your classroom?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's exactly the goal of it.
We launched it in 2019 with this mission of making Arlington
accessible to educators and students and learners of all
kinds.
So exactly as you put it, it's not just for people in a formal
school setting.
We really do a lot of outreach to homeschool communities.
Please use our stuff.
Take it.
It's all free.
It's also for lifelong learners, which is essentially anybody
who's an adult and maybe not in a formal learning program.
The idea is that we only have three members of the History
Office now, and we cannot be with every one of the two
million, over two million visitors that come to Arlington
or the countless numbers of millions that engage with us
online.
We do consider those of you who can't come to Arlington to be
our virtual visitors, and you're a key part of our audience and
community.
So we have created walking tours that essentially put us in your
pockets so you can read and guide yourself around the
cemetery from home or on site to learn about the different sites,
the different people, the different memorials.
We have lesson plans, we have primary source packets, we have
questions, we have activities.
We just released our America 250 module focused on the American
Revolution.
And one of the products in there that I had the most fun working
on is the design your own city activity.
Pierre Lenfant is buried at Arlington.
He was a veteran of the American Revolution, and his work
inspired much of the modern design of DC.
So we ask the students in those activities, design your own
capital city.
What would your capital city look like?
So our materials, they're not just for history or civics
teachers.
They can be for art teachers.
We have a whole lesson on military music.
We have lessons on horticulture and STEM.
There is one math lesson about decoding that there's math in
it.
I'm a historian.
It scares me, but math teachers, you will hopefully love it.
So we're really trying to provide all sorts of resources
to make it easy to incorporate Arlington into your curriculum,
no matter where you are.
And I know, especially for your listeners in Arizona, a lot of
you might not come out here, but they're still for you.
There's connections, many connections to Arizona.
And if if you think we don't have one, send me an email,
we'll we'll find it.
But we really want to make this site accessible to everybody
because that's who it belongs to.
It belongs to the American people.
We're also launching very soon a virtual visit experience for the
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
It's so cool.
Our contract education team did a fantastic job with all of the
technology.
I take zero credit for any of the cool tech things on there,
but it actually allows you to click through and walk through
different areas of not just the tomb, but the memorial
amphitheaters.
So it really will allow you to have your students visit the
tomb from wherever you are based.
SPEAKER_00: This is so cool.
I'm like looking at like Earth, air, and space, which you said
Arizona.
The Powell expeditions are on here.
So Arizonans, there's, you know, the Grand Canyon, but there's so
much on here.
And I love that Arlington really embraces the civics, it's
everywhere, right?
It's in all of our curriculums.
It's in people who are lifelong learners who are just really
interested about this stuff.
I'm so excited for the virtual visits, too.
Is there anything else that you want our listeners to know about
Memorial Day, about Arlington National Cemetery, any of that?
SPEAKER_01: Well, for the many Civics educators who I think are
probably listening, we do have a Civics module and we keep adding
material to that Civics module.
So some of our America 250 content is in there as well.
So we're really trying to connect the stories of the
cemetery to the curriculum and the standards that are being
taught in Civics.
I would also say to you educators out there, if you have
an idea for something you think we should consider or a way you
think we can connect Arlington to what you are actually doing,
please reach out to us through the cemetery's website.
We would love to hear from you.
This program is successful because we've had a lot of
cooperation and insight from teachers, and the the contract
team we work with has many teachers, former teachers on it.
I'm not in the classroom like you guys are.
I need to hear from you to know what we can provide that's
useful.
We were able to go to the National Council for Social
Studies in DC this year, which was wonderful.
I learned so much from just chatting with social studies
teachers after panels or talking to them when they came up to our
booths.
So this is a program for all of you.
Homeschool included every kind of school: private, public,
university, elementary.
We haven't quite cracked early education yet, but if you think
of something, let me know.
So I want to share that.
Follow us because we do a lot of virtual programs as well that
are not necessarily only connected to our education
program.
This summer we are going to be doing a webinar with the
National Museum of the United States Army on the American
Revolution.
Every program we do is free.
We have a lot of them that are recorded.
So some of our past programs may be really useful to your
teachers and your students.
For example, a program that I had the honor of participating
in last year with the Holocaust Museum was recorded and it was
about Eisenhower's experiences liberating a concentration camp.
And we now have a teacher guide specifically tied to that
webinar so teachers can hopefully tie it into their
classrooms.
So please follow us on all the social media platforms.
We also have a lot of resources that are secondary sources that
you can drive your students towards.
The articles on our website are a good place for them to start
some research.
We recently released a digital publication that I wrote about
the history of the tomb of the unknown soldier.
That's all free.
It's online, it's for all of you and the American people.
So please use what we have.
And I think for Memorial Day, just remember what it is about.
And there's always a time for celebration and patriotism.
And particularly this year, July 4th is hopefully going to be
just a big, a big party.
And I think that because Memorial Day and July 4th are
really quite close on the calendar, I would urge people to
save that celebratory spirit, that joy for July 4th, and use
Memorial Day as a day of reflection.
And that can be quiet reflection on your own.
It does not have to be broadcast around.
Even just a couple minutes thinking about what the military
has accomplished and what the individuals who have served in
the military have gone through, that is just as valid of a type
of commemoration as showing up at a Memorial Day parade.
So I would urge you to find a way to make it something that's
meaningful to you.
And if you're still in school, what can you do at your school
that week to try and teach the students about Memorial Day?
Utilize our resources, yes, but think about is there an art
project you can do?
Is there a community service project that could be the focus
of that week instead of the focus on whether the swimming
pool is opening?
SPEAKER_00: And listeners, there will be a plethora of links in
our show notes.
But as Alison was talking, I was looking at the website.
Everything is accessible.
It's super easy to find.
Alison, thank you so much, not only for your expertise and your
history, but for really having a conversation about understanding
what the state is and understanding, you know, the men
and women who've given that ultimate sacrifice.
So thank you, thank you, thank you.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, thank you, Dr.
Evans.