‘A Chance to Reflect’: The Meaning of Memorial Day in DC

Memorial Day is the holiday set aside to honor the sacrifice of those who gave it all for country, and the nation’s capital will mark it with events from Sunday’s concert at the foot of the Capitol to the dutiful placing of the flags on the graves at Arlington National Cemetery.

The poppy wall of honor near the Lincoln Memorial helps enumerate that sacrifice: 645,000 lives going as far back as WWI are symbolized by that many poppies, the flower recognized as the international symbol of sacrifice in war. 

This year, it features a commemoration of the end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. It’s been half a century, and yet those wounds are still there. 

This is the time to help the healing of those who survived that conflict. 

“Hopefully it gives everybody a chance to reflect and to pay remembrance or tribute, and also if they see any Vietnam vets who are out there who didn’t get the respect or honor when they returned, especially on the anniversary of the Vietnam War… they get a chance to say thank you,” Joseph Sluder, of USAA Military Affairs, said. 

The unofficial weekend start of summer brings more people to Washington, D.C., a city of monuments. Among those are memorials, and the holiday emphasizes what they’re really about. 

“It was actually just a coincidence that I was here on Memorial Day weekend,” Tristan Weave, a California resident, said. “But [it’s] dawning on me: it does mean a lot to be here in our nation’s capital.”

And this year, the perfect weather for the first part of the weekend provides the perfect environment for enjoying the freedoms that so many died to protect. 

A temporary installation has popped up on the National Mall to celebrate Memorial Day and pay tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice. News4’s Derrick Ward reports.

“For us, it’s a family vacation. It’s a chance to be here, but I do get a chance to show my granddaughter my uncle’s name on the memorial wall,” Theresa Brady, from Tennessee, said. 

One so young as Brady’s granddaughter may not understand the gravity of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall, and the war and sacrifice that it symbolizes. Grandparents may struggle to make them understand. 

“She’s going to have a ton of questions when she sees that big ol’ wall,” Brady said. 

But therein lies a lesson for the young, a lesson of sacrifice and of sadness on the sunniest of days in D.C. Imparting that lesson is another way to honor those who gave it all for us.