Photo By Eric Pilgrim | Service members who made the ultimate sacrifice were honored during a Memorial Day...... read more read more
FORT KNOX, Ky. — The commanding general and acting command sergeant major of U.S. Army Cadet Command and Fort Knox honored the ultimate sacrifices of service members May 25 with a Memorial Day wreath laying ceremony.
Performed at the post flagpole in front of Cadet Command headquarters, Maj. Gen. John Evans Jr. and Command Sgt. Maj. John Woodson, along with a handful of others to include a Fort Knox Visual Information film crew, watched as a flag detail hoisted the flag from half-staff to the top.
Shortly after, Evans and Woodson joined Harvey Casteel from USACC and Fort Knox Executive Services to place the wreath in front of the pole.
Memorial Day has its roots in the Civil War. After the end of the war on April 9, 1865, several communities and towns across the nation began the practice of flying flags at half-staff and decorating the graves of fallen Soldiers with flowers.
The earliest of these, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, was Waterloo, New York, declared by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966 to be the official birthplace of Memorial Day. The government would declare a national day of remembrance three years after the end of the Civil War.
“On May 5, 1868, the head of an organization of Union veterans — the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) — established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers,” states the Veterans Affairs website. “Maj. Gen. John A. Logan declared that Decoration Day should be observed on May 30.
“It is believed that date was chosen because flowers would be in bloom all over the country.”
The film crew captured video of the solemn Fort Knox event, which has been posted on the installation’s official Facebook site.
| Date Taken: | 05.25.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 05.25.2020 14:54 |
| Story ID: | 370726 |
| Location: | FORT KNOX, KENTUCKY, US |
| Web Views: | 34 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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