NORWICH — Communities throughout the Upper Valley have been holding Memorial Day events all weekend, including a ceremony today at Colburn Park in Lebanon and a parade in Claremont.
It’s always been an important, and serious, holiday in the Upper Valley, where a history of military service in many families combines with a sense of community and honoring those who have come before us.
In many towns, schoolchildren can learn from veterans about the sacrifices of the men and women who died in U.S. military service, and who are honored on this day.
It started after the Civil War as “Decoration Day,” to place flowers on the graves of Union soldiers.
Memorial Day became an official federal holiday in 1971, though in towns like Weathersfield, residents have been placing flags on veterans graves for decades.
The Weathersfield Veterans Committee placed 395 flags on graves in town cemeteries last year, according to the town report, up from 288 in 1999. And four generations of descendants of Rosalvo Bradish, who fought in the Civil War as a teen, have been active in placing flags at graves in town.
Norwich native Kate Van Arman retired from the U.S. Army in 2016 after a 20-year career and continues to mark the holiday. Van Arman, who now lives in Thetford Center, is a family nurse practitioner by training and works at the VA Medical Center in White River Junction.
She was to serve as master of ceremonies at the medical center’s Memorial Day wreath-laying event on Sunday.
She said she sees the day as an important way to emphasize “service beyond self” for younger generations.
“I just wish young kids would look at the Peace Corps, the military or AmeriCorps, service to others that really builds one’s character in the long run,” she said. “It’s hard to put a monetary value on the feeling you get when you help somebody else.”
Her father Jay Van Arman, a dairy farmer, is a Vietnam veteran, and her sister Emily served in the Air Force and is involved in Norwich’s Memorial Day Service.
“The shared common value” of all the military branches, Kate Van Arman said via email, “is to serve our nation. So did the people whose names are etched on crumbling slate of New England cemeteries, into white marble in Europe, and black stone in Washington, D.C.”
John P. Gregg can be reached at 603-727-3217 or jgregg@vnews.com.