Honoring Past and Current Members of the Armed Forces of the United States and Encouraging Americans to Wear Red Poppies on Memorial Day

HONORING PAST AND CURRENT MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES AND ENCOURAGING AMERICANS TO WEAR RED POPPIES ON MEMORIAL DAY -- (House of Representatives - May 19, 2004)

Mr. WICKER. Mr. Speaker, I can remember as a young boy, going to downtown Pontotoc, Mississippi, with my parents on Memorial Day to hand out poppies.

I thought Members might be interested in a little history lesson about the origin of Memorial Day which began as Decoration Day. The facts, as I have come to understand them, are that in 1866 a group of Columbus, Mississippi, women met to decide on a way to honor the Confederate war dead in the local Friendship Cemetery.

Once the ladies arrived at the cemetery, one of the women began placing flowers on the graves of Union soldiers, too, because they also had given their lives for their beliefs.

Other women followed suit and soon all of the graves, Confederate and Union, had flowers. This generous gesture was told and retold and finally made its way to the New York Tribune where the short article was seen by a young attorney named Francis Miles Finch. He was so moved by the generosity of the Southern ladies and their Decoration Day that he wrote the poem "The Blue and the Gray" and it was published in the Atlantic Monthly in September of 1867.

Mr. Speaker, other towns may claim Decoration Day or Memorial Day perhaps earlier than the one in Columbus, but Columbus, Mississippi, was the first to honor former enemies. Here is what the Library of Congress said:

"Columbus, Mississippi, thus can rightly claim to be not only one day ahead of Columbus, Georgia, in its observance of Memorial Day but more generous in its distribution of the tributes of honor and mourning."

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to represent Columbus, Mississippi, in the Congress, the place where Memorial Day first began.