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PresidentRachelWoodsbrought the meeting to order Wednesday May 17th with 13 Rotarians present. Rotarian/Pastor Bill Heermann offered up thanks for the day and the wonderful rain that our area received.

Assistant Song leader Jeff Doom led the group in singing two verses of “America”. We did a great job on a beautiful song about our country.

Membership Minute Chairman Ken Cotton spoke about our Rotary Mottoes which began in 1910 with “He profits most who serves his fellows best and “Service, Not Self”. The two slogans were modified in 1950, 1989, and 2004. In 2010 the Council on Legislation changed the official wording to One Profits Most Who Serves Best.

Rotarian Jerry Weber assumed the role of Sergeant at Arms in the absence of his son Jordan: $1 to Rachel Woods for demanding that Jerry take Jordan’s place; $2 to Jeff Doom for always talking about books and Book of the Month Club with members; $2 to Bill Frei for getting his cattle out to pasture first; $2 more to Jeff Doom for mowing into the late evening and preventing Mary Cotton from sleeping; $2 to Kathe Henke for telling a friendship story; $2 to Bryan Slaba for making Jordan Weber unable to attend Rotary; $2 to Scott McAdaragh for driving his white van and raising suspicions; $2 to Craig Krsnak for giving out big bills; $2 to Jerry Henke for looking so “innocent” to avoid a fine. $2.50 in a Happy Fine came from Jerry Weber for the rain he received. This was followed by a general discussion on rainfall totals from last week in the area.

Rotarian Ken Cotton held the winning ticket number but only drew the three of Spades from the deck. General discussion centered around how clean the area looks after the club members and other willing volunteers took time to clean the ditches in all four directions coming into Wagner. It was the consensus that the club should do this every year. We will welcome any volunteer help!

Rotarian Patty Frei oversaw the program for the day. She gave an excellent program on the history of Memorial Day in our country. The following is her program which contains many fewer known facts about this holiday. Memorial Day is coming soon—it will be observed this year on Monday, May 19th.

Originally known as Decoration Day---On May 5, 1868, General John A. Logan, leader of an organization for Northern Civil War veterans, called for a nationwide day of remembrance later that month. “The 30th of May 1868 is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land”, he proclaimed. The date of Decoration Day, as he called it, was chosen because it wasn’t the anniversary of any particular battle.

On the first Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, and 5,000 participants decorated the graves of the 20,000 Civil War soldiers buried there. Many Northern States held similar commemorative events and reprised the tradition in subsequent years; by 1890 each one had made Decoration Day an official state holiday. Southern states, on the other hand, continued to honor the dead on separate days until after World War I.

Memorial Day, as Decoration Day gradually came to be known, originally honored only those lost while fighting in the Civil War. But during World War I the United States found itself embroiled in another major conflict, and the holiday evolved to commemorate American military personnel who died in all wars, including World War II, Vietnam War, The Korean War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For decades, Memorial Day continued to be observed on May 30, the date General Logan had selected for the first Decoration Day. But in 1968, Congress passed the uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May to create a three-day weekend for federal employees. The change went into effect in 1971. The same law also declared Memorial Day an official federal holiday.

Memorial Day Traditions and Rituals---Cities and towns across the United States host Memorial Day parades each year, often incorporating military personnel and members of veterans organizations. Some of the largest parades take place in Chicago, New York, and Washington D.C. Many Americas also observe Memorial Day by visiting cemeteries and memorials. Some people wear a red poppy in remembrance of those fallen in a war—a tradition that began with a World War I poem. On a less somber note, many people take weekend trips or throw parties and barbecues on the holiday, perhaps because Memorial Day weekend—the long weekend comprising the Saturday and Sunday before Memorial Day and Memorial Day itself—unofficially marks the beginning of summer.

Despite the increasing celebration of the holiday as a summer rite of passage, there are some formal rituals still on the books: The American flag should be hung at half-staff until noon on Memorial Day, then raised to the top of the staff. And since 2000, when the U.S. Congress passed legislation, all Americans are encouraged to pause for a National Moment of Remembrance at 3p.m local time. The federal government has also used the holiday to honor non-veterans— the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated on Memorial Day 1922.

Arlington National Cemetery has been the focal point of national Memorial Day commemorations since 1868. The first Memorial Day was on May 30, 1868, with General Ulysses S. Grant in attendance and General James Garfield as the featured speaker. His famous Memorial Day Quote— “We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country, they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue.” Arlington is the only national cemetery to hold service members from every war in US history. In 1892 soldiers killed in the Revolutionary War were reinterred from a Georgetown cemetery, and casualties from the War of 1812 have been reburied at Arlington as well.

On Memorial Day Weekend soldiers plant flags in front of every tombstone at Arlington. Since 1948, troops in the 3rd US Infantry Regiment-the Army’s official ceremonial unit known as the “Old Guard” place a small American flag in front of each tombstone. Each flag planted is precisely one foot in front of a grave marker and perfectly centered.

A wreath is placed at the Tomb of the unknown Soldier.

In Flanders Fields by John McCrae: In Flanders fields the poppies flow, Between the crosses, row on row, that mark our place; and in the sky the larks, still bravely singing, fly scarce heard amid the gun below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago, we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved, and were loved, and now we lie in Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw. The torch: be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders Fields.