PHALON’S FILE: The Real Memorial Day

May 22, 2023

Let’s not forget that next Tuesday is Memorial Day.

“Tuesday is Memorial Day?” you might ask. “How is that? Tuesday is when I’ll be back to work with my holiday hangover!”

The real Memorial Day is May 30th. You might notice the fine print on some calendars that says “Memorial Day (traditional)” on May 30th. Memorial Day was observed on May 30th from 1868 until 1970, when the day was snatched from its historic date and moved to a floating day that would always make it a Monday and, therefore, create three-day weekends so Americans could drink beer, have barbeques, buy discount furniture and otherwise overlook the real meaning of the day.

But there is still a place where Memorial Day is observed with tradition and reverence. Though the origins of Memorial Day have been subject to debate, Waterloo, New York, has been officially recognized as the birthplace of the American Memorial Day.

We visited Waterloo on May 30th a few years back. It’s just a couple miles west of Seneca Falls, the town believed by many to be the inspiration for Bedford Falls. Both villages share the same “It’s a Wonderful Life” atmosphere.

To be sure, Waterloo doesn’t neglect to view the end of May as the beginning of summer and celebrates that appropriately. In fact, the three-day weekend when Memorial Day is officially observed around the rest of the country is filled with festivals, pizza-eating contests, car shows and plenty of food, drink and fireworks.

Historic speeches delivered by actors portraying Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, organizer of the Seneca Falls Convention (the first women’s rights convention) in nearby Seneca Falls in 1848, highlight the weekend.

Waterloo was an important stop on the Underground Railroad, where Quaker abolitionists risked their lives to help runaway slaves, and this is also recalled and re-enacted during the weekend.

But on May 30th, this year a Tuesday, all of that is over, and residents and visitors in Waterloo observe Memorial Day in its traditional manner. No one “celebrates” on this day. Services are held in the cemeteries of Waterloo, and speakers recall the sacrifices made by the men and women of the U.S. armed forces during the past two-and-a-half centuries.

On May 30, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson signed a proclamation designating Waterloo as the birthplace of Memorial Day. In 1866, a local druggist named Henry C. Welles told a gathering of residents honoring veterans of the Civil War, that it was meaningful to remember the fallen by decorating their graves.

On May 5, 1867, the first “Decoration Day” was held in Waterloo. By the following year, the day was commemorated on May 30th in many nearby communities and quickly spread across the country. Today Waterloo hosts the National Memorial Day Museum on Main Street (where else) and continues to honor the fallen on the traditional day of May 30th.

Joe Phalon, Contributing Writer

Contributing Writer

Joe brings decades of journalism experience to the Ridge View Echo, covering everything from local school boards to the U.S. Supreme Court. A former National Law Journal editor and Columbia Law School press officer, he now enjoys telling community stories in Blairstown, where he lives with his wife, Rose, and their two dachshunds.