SHARPSBURG, Md. - On Monday, May 29, 2023, starting at 11:00 a.m., the National Park Service (NPS) will present a Memorial Day Program at Antietam National Cemetery. The Cemetery is located on Rt. 34, just east of Sharpsburg, MD.
The NPS will welcome keynote speaker Dr. James Broomall to present “A Great but Benign Sorrow: How the Good Death Shaped Memorial Day." Dr. Broomall is an Associate Professor of History at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, WV, and is the director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War. He is a cultural historian of the Civil War era and has published numerous articles and essays.
Hagerstown Choral Arts will perform songs and Antietam National Battlefield's volunteer group, Battery B, 4th U.S. Artillery, will conduct a cannon salute. Master Sergeant Geoff Blankenship and Chief Master Sergeant (Retired) Ron Glazer of the 167th Airlift Wing, Martinsburg, West Virginia will perform Taps.
Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in military service of the United States of America. On May 5, 1868, three years after the Civil War ended, Major General John A. Logan, head of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of United States veterans of the Civil War, established the day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war-dead with flowers. Ever since 1868, this day of remembrance has been commemorated across the country and in 1971, Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday.
The town of Sharpsburg will commemorate Memorial Day on Saturday, May 27, with a ceremony on the town square at 11:00 a.m. and the annual Memorial Day Parade starting at 1:30 p.m. In a wonderful tradition, the Sharpsburg Elementary School 5th grade class will place 5,000 flags at the National Cemetery, one for every headstone, on Thursday, May 25, in preparation for the holiday.
-NPS-
Tags: memorial day civil war antietam national battlefield antietam national cemetery
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service