Editorial: A day to pay respects and hope for permanent peace

Memorial Day is set aside to remember those men and women who went off to war, then gave their lives in defense of our country and freedom.

Traditionally, it is a holiday filled with red-white-and-blue festooned parades and barbecues. For many, it’s sort of the start of summer.

It is also a day to pause and consider the courage and dedication of others.

Those include the more than 100 military service members whose names are listed on the statues at the entrance of the Marin Center’s Avenue of the Flags.

Most were teenagers and young adults who might have been walking along Tiburon’s Main Street, on San Rafael’s Fourth Street or Stinson Beach, or attending class at College of Marin, before they were called to battlegrounds in other parts of the world.

They, their service and their sacrifice are not forgotten.

For some who have lost loved ones in warfronts, paying tribute will come in many forms — visiting cemeteries or even just pausing from the hustle and bustle of the holiday and paying homage to their sacrifice.

Again this year, local veterans organizations will host a Memorial Day ceremony at the Marin Center.

It is usually a well-attended patriotic event filled with music and speeches and the laying of flowers on the center’s memorial statues.

For many veterans in attendance, they will be remembering comrades who didn’t make it home to rejoin their loved ones and build their futures. For many others, they are spouses, siblings, offspring and friends of those who were killed in war.

This year, the ceremony will be held in the Exhibit Hall, as the Veterans Memorial Auditorium is closed for seismic repairs and its parking lot is being reconstructed.

The Las Gallinas Valley Sanitary District’s Non-Marching Band, another Marin tradition, will perform for the ceremony.

There will be other ceremonies and gatherings held across the county.

Fifty years ago, then-President Richard Nixon issued the traditional White House declaration of the holiday,

We were still embroiled in the war in Vietnam.

In his 1974 address, Nixon, who served in the Navy during World War II, declared Memorial Day “as a day of prayer for permanent peace.”

He said Memorial Day is a day to pay tribute to those who lost their lives and “to emulate their dedication to a world free from the threat of force and the rule of fear.”

Unfortunately, during these troubling days, it is a threatening world. But those prospects are ones we can still hope for.

Memorial Day has been a tradition since 1868, when the Grand Army of the Republic designated May 30 as “Decoration Day,” a day to honor those Union soldiers who fell in the Civil War’s bloody battles.

On that day, an estimated 5,000 people joined forces to lay flowers on the graves of 20,000 soldiers buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Memorial Day is a time to pay our respects to those who laid down their lives, from those who fought in the Revolutionary War to those who have served and died in more recent warfronts.

As Nixon said in his speech back then, the holiday is a day when we feel both pride and pain. It is a day dedicated to remember and pay our respects to those who gave their lives for our country, liberty and the hope for a permanent peace.