By Kathryn Wohlpart
The smell of barbeque roasting drifting through the air, people sipping lemonade, and munching on watermelon in their backyards with friends. Parents don’t have to work and children are finally on summer vacation. Memorial Day’s three-day weekend is full of local parades and long-awaited summer vacations.
For local Boca Raton veterans, however, Memorial Day means something more.
Local veteran, Master Chief Frank Bartanowitz, who is currently serving on the USS Abraham Lincoln, thinks that Memorial Day is a day to remember those who came before him and showed him how to serve his country.
Lt. Commander Kenneth Bingham teaches ROTC at Boca Raton Community High School. To Bingham, the most important part of Memorial Day is “getting young people involved.” Bingham stated that Memorial Day is not Veteran’s Day, and while Veteran’s Day is important, Memorial Day is “a day to remember those who gave their lives for the freedom that we celebrate today and to remind all of us that people have made sacrifices so the rest of us civilians can be free. It’s more than just a weekend off, it’s more than just hot dogs and hamburgers and a good time.“
Memorial Day was formerly known as Decoration Day, a day to decorate soldiers’ graves in remembrance of their service. It was started in 1868, according to Veteran Affairs, in Arlington, VA. Decoration Day was changed to Memorial Day in 1971 when it was also expanded to all deceased members of the American military from all wars.
“My wife and kids and I usually celebrate with a small cook-out. Sometimes we go to a local cemetery to place flags at the tombstones of fallen Heroes,” said Bartanowitz.
Every Memorial Day, at 3 p.m. local time, the nation has a minute long pause to silence and prayer. Boca Raton hosts memorial services in the Boca Raton Cemetery and Veteran’s Memorial Park has a memorial off of W Palmetto Park Rd.
Florida Atlantic University gets its students involved using social media, “Florida Atlantic University encourages its students to engage in the ongoing community events such as memorials and festivals…The Division of Student Affairs sends out a letter of remembrance honoring those veterans who have sacrificed all, which is distributed through email and social media,” according to U.S. Army Veteran and Assistant Dean of Military and Veterans’ Affairs at FAU, Dylan M Reyes-Cairo.
Veterans say that it is the simply things that can bring the memorial back to Memorial day and that make a difference to soldiers everywhere. Just a moment of remembrance for the veterans, fallen and alive.
Bingham thinks that everyone should “fly their flags until 11 o’clock at half-mast then raise it all the way up. If we could get every citizen in Boca to fly a flag that day I think that would be pretty awesome.”