Decoration Day

Interesting how holidays have a way of changing throughout the years. My early recollection of Memorial Day was that it was just as often called Decoration Day and was the day to visit both the Lehi and American Fork cemeteries. I don't recall any connection with honoring veterans who had died serving their country. That was left more to Veteran's Day in November. Instead, it was a time to gather up all the flowers around the house and all the quart jars with chipped rims and number 10 cans or old tomato juice cans. We five kids would dress in our best school clothes and hop in the car for a real day of visiting.

The drive from Springville to American Fork was a good hour's drive at least because there was no freeway between the two towns. At first we didn't even have a car radio but that was a bonus because Dad would lead us all in singing with his wonderful baritone voice. We'd often stop at Grandma's house in American Fork before proceeding up to the cemetery. At Grandma's we'd gather even more flowers and containers.

At the cemetery, we'd clean up any old rusted cans and throw out flowers that had wilted there. We kids would try to remember where each of the family plots was and who was buried in which plot. Most of the headstones were very readable but there were a couple that mysteriously had only a date of a cryptic inscription of "Baby". Cousins, aunts, and uncles would start arriving from all over the valley and we'd have a mini-family reunion right there in the cemetery.

We would, of course, want to docrate the graves that meant the most to us and want to put as many flowers on each grave as possible. But we had to hold back because we still had the graveyard in Lehi to visit. Soon, we were piling back in the car and heading to the neighboring town where we repeated the decorating process while meeting and greeting relatives from the other side of the family.

After what seemed like hours, the adults would finally realize that us kids were bored out of our wits. We'd then go back into town or back to American Fork to eat with some relative or we might even find a park and have a picnic.

Decoration Day is one of the things our kids missed out on because we moved to California to raise our family and traveling 12 hours to decorate graves was just never part of our plans. We didn't have any graves or even that many living relatives in California to make it a day of remembrance or family gettogethers.