Originally, this was Decoration Day, a day set aside in 1868 at the suggestion of Union General John A. Logan to remember the dead of the Civil War. By 1890 all of the northern states had adopted May 30 as “Decoration Day, a day to decorate the graves of those Civil War soldiers who had died “to make men free,” as the song says.
Two world wars turned the day into a day to remember our nation’s dead from all wars. It became “Memorial Day” in 1971 when a three-day holiday was created with the last Monday in May, regardless of the date, as the observance.
The Jefferson City Community Band is holding its annual Memorial Day Concert today at the First Christian Church, the usual venue for this concert.
The program is always patriotic music or music with a military orientation.
One of the selections this year is John Williams’ Hymn to the Fallen from the 1998 Stephen Spielberg movie “Saving Private Ryan.”
The movie is the story of a World War II Army Ranger unit’s search for a Private James Ryan, an Iowa farm boy whose three brothers have been killed in action. The Army wants him sent home, alive, but first he must be found.
The unit is led behind enemy lines by Captain John H. Miller to find Ryan before the War Department has to send a fourth letter of profound regret to his mother. The unit finds Ryan but pays a tragic price by losing several men to save this one. Miller is the last, telling Ryan, “Earn this” as he dies—to live a life worthy of the cost of saving him.
The musical motif is repeated at the end of the film as we see the face of Private Ryan (played by Matt Damon) morph into the face of James Ryan (played by Harrison Young) fifty years later, visiting the cemetery at Normandy with his wife, children, and grandchildren. He finds the simple cross that marks Miller’s grave and kneels.
Old James Ryan: “My family is with me today. They wanted to come with me. To be honest with you, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel coming back here. Every day I think about what you said to me that day on the bridge. I tried to live my life the best that I could. I hope that was enough. I hope that, at least in your eyes, I’ve earned what all of you have done for me.”
His wife approaches. “James?..”
She looks at the headstone. “Captain John H. Miller.”
Ryan stands and looks at his wife. “Tell me I have led a good life.”
“What?”
“Tell me I’m a good man.”
“You are,” and she walks back to the family members who have been watching, quietly, as Old James Ryan straightens, and salutes the cross with Miller’s name on it.
Writer John Biguenet, in a 2014 Atlantic Magazine article about the movie concludes that “the living are called not merely to bear witness to the achievement of the fallen heroes; the living are in fact the achievement itself. Like Private Ryan we cannot help but ask what we’ve done to deserve such sacrifice by others and beg their forgiveness for what we have cost them. And like James Ryan, all we can do to justify that sacrifice is to live our lives as well as we are able.”
On this Memorial Day, when self-centeredness, too often further corrupted by meanness, burdens our daily discussions, perhaps we can find a moment to justify the sacrifices of those intended to be honored today by living our lives better than we are living them.