Honoring Fallen Service Members on Memorial Day
AllSides Summary
Every year since 1868, the U.S. has held Memorial Day to honor fallen service members. Voices on all sides marked Memorial Day by commemorating the soldiers, their memories, and the values they died for.
Writing for the Military Times (Center bias), a Gold Star widow remembered her husband who was killed in Iraq, and described learning on a foreign trip how "grief is not a national trait, and the struggles of women who lost their husbands in service to their nations are universal."
Writing for the New York Times Opinion (Left), one veteran reflected on service members who've been lost to suicide and substance abuse, saying they "remind us that the cost of war is not borne solely by soldiers on the field of battle and that for too many, the field of battle is unavoidable."
Writing for the Washington Examiner (Lean Right), a politics professor recalled President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and said as we honor fallen soldiers, we "must link their sacrifice to the good principles, practices, and persons that make us America."
Featured Coverage of this Story
From the Left
Who Should We Honor on Memorial Day?
In 1866, four women placing spring flowers on the graves of Confederate soldiers at Friendship Cemetery in Columbus, Miss., noticed that the nearby graves of Union soldiers were barren. They took it upon themselves to decorate those, too.
Lately I have been thinking about those women as Memorial Day approaches. Their decision to expand the notion of whom they chose to remember lies at the heart of what Memorial Day should be about. For those women in Mississippi, the Union soldiers, enemies in a war that divided not only a...
From the Center
‘Snapshot of their memories:’ Gold Star widow reflects on Memorial Day
Memorial Day — the beginning of summer, campouts, barbeques and lazy days at the lake. That is what Memorial Day used to mean to me. On March 31, 2004, the day took on a completely different meaning, and now it and the days surrounding it are spent reflecting on the lives of those who died in the service of their country. My husband, 1st Lt. Doyle M. Hufstedler, was killed by an improvised explosive device in Iraq. He was 25. Four others died with him.
Nearly every Memorial Day, our daughter,...
From the Right
On Memorial Day, let us remember the fallen as Lincoln did
Memorial Day’s name seems a bit ambiguous compared with its more precise object. To memorialize means to preserve the memory of or to commemorate. We do that with all sorts of persons and events. The monuments and statues around Washington, D.C., and across the country memorialize. Funerals do so as well for the dearly departed. Nearly any holiday, sacred or secular, calls on us to reverently recall.
On Memorial Day, though, we do not set aside a time generically for remembering, leaving the who or what to the decision of...
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