2016 Plymouth Memorial Day Parade: What You Need to Know

PLYMOUTH, MI – On Monday, May 30, residents of Plymouth and the surrounding area will pause to honor the nation’s war dead in the 2016 Memorial Day Parade in downtown Plymouth.

The parade begins at 9 a.m. and participants will march to Veterans Park at Main and Penniman, where a memorial service will be held.

Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, was officially proclaimed on May 5, 1868 by Gen. John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republican, as a way to honor those who died in the four-year Civil War.

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More than 20,000 Union and Confederate graves were decorated with flowers at Arlington National Cemetery on the first Decoration Day by 5,000 war widows, mourners and others.

New York was the first state to officially recognize Decoration Day in 1873, and it was recognized by all the Northern states by 1890. Southern states, where strong anti-North sentiments ran deep for decades after the Civil War, held their own separate observances to honor their war dead, eschewing Decoration Day as an observance to honor Union soldiers.

It became an official U.S. holiday in 1971, and the name was changed to Memorial Day, though it is still called Decoration Day in many areas, and the tradition of laying flowers on graves of veterans and civilians alike is an important tradition for many Americans.

Almost every U.S. state now observes Memorial Day on the last Monday in May, but several Southern states still honor Confederate War dead on a separate day, including Texas (Jan. 19); April 26th in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi (April 26); South Carolina (May 10); and Louisiana and Tennessee (June 3, Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis’ birthday).

National Moment of Silence

The “National Moment of Remembrance” resolution was passed on Dec 2000 which asks that at 3 p.m. local time, for all Americans “To voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a Moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to ‘Taps.’ ”