Memorial Day ceremony to be held Monday

DAYTON — County officials are preparing for the annual Memorial Day ceremony on the courthouse lawn on Monday, May 27.

A Memorial Day Observance Ceremony will be held on Monday at 11 a.m. on the courthouse lawn. The guest speaker will be Master Chief Louis G. Boothe, U.S. Navy (retired).

Special performances will be provided by Jan Bruce, chaplain for the Tennessee State Legion Auxiliary, the Rhea County High School Band and Gabriel Lajas.

In case of inclement weather, the service will be held in the main courtroom of the historic Rhea County Courthouse on the second floor.

On Thursday, May 23, county maintenance workers and members of the Four Season garden Club spent the afternoon cleaning and beautifying the area around the war memorial in preparation for the event. Garden club members said that plants that were recently planted in the area are nearly all native and will likely thrive in their natural area and serve as polllinators.

Rhea County Historian Pat Guffey said that Memorial Day began three years after the end of the Civil War, with the name Decoration Day.

“This was a time set aside to decorate graves of the war dead with flowers. The date of May 30 was selected by Major General John A. Logan; it is believed that this date was chosen because flowers would be in bloom all over the country, and it was not the anniversary of a war battle,” Guffey said. “In 1882 the alternative name of ‘Memorial Day’ was first used, but did not become a common practice until after World War II. Also, the name “Memorial Day” did not become the official name until 1967, when a federal law was passed declaring this. Then, in 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill, moving three holidays to a specific Monday in order to create a three-day weekend. Memorial Day was one of those holidays.”

For more information on Memorial Day, see Guffey’s column on page 6 of this edition of The Herald-News.