On May 1, 1865, newly freed slaves in Charleston, South Carolina, held a parade of 10,000 people to honor 257 dead Union soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave. The former slaves had unearthed and properly buried the soldiers, placing flowers at their graves.
David Blight, a professor of history and African American studies at Yale, has called the Charleston commemoration the first Memorial Day, although the inaugural official national observance occurred on May 30, 1868, at Arlington National Cemetery to honor soldiers killed in the Civil War.
Laguna Woods resident and veteran Ernest Leard gave this account of the holiday as keynote speaker at the Memorial Day ceremony at the Performing Arts Center on Monday, May 26.
“It’s a Memorial Day story you have probably never heard before,” Leard told the audience.
And, though he acknowledges there are many other accounts of the first Memorial Day observance, “I believe the (Charleston) story is the truth.”
A capacity crowd packed the auditorium of 814 seats on Memorial Day to honor those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for peace, freedom and the country.
The ceremony opened with an invocation and prayer by Alan Clark, chaplain of Laguna Woods American Legion Post 257, honoring the more than 1 million military fatalities since the Revolutionary War in 1775.
Dennis Powell, post commander, then led the audience in the Pledge of Allegiance. Post 257 member Kathy Rath and Pastor Paul Finley of the Lutheran Church of the Cross joined forces to sing patriotic songs against a video backdrop of military-themed images of America from sea to shining sea.
A host of speakers then encouraged attendees to give thanks to those who fought, prayers for those who died, and to reflect on the principles they served to protect.
Laguna Woods resident and Air Force veteran Art Stone spent one year in Vietnam 57 years ago.
“I survived, but today we remember those who did not survive,” he said, before giving a brief history of Memorial Day. “Man, we’ve had our share of war,” he added. “We are here because they gave all.”
Cush Bhada, president of the Golden Rain Foundation, paid tribute to military families, and Laguna Woods Mayor Shari Horne paid respects to those who died.
“The best way to honor the dead is to take care of the living,” Horne said.
Keynote speaker Leard (pronounced like “beard,” he notes) comes from a military family. At the ceremony, he honored his father, who was killed when his B-29 bomber crashed on Guam at the end of the Korean War. He also remembered his uncle, who was lost in his B-24 bomber over the South Pacific in the closing months of World War II.
Leard, 77, spent 24 years in the Navy, from 1970 to 1994. He served on three ships: the USS Hancock, a World War II-era aircraft carrier, which took him to the coast of Vietnam in 1972; the amphibious flagship USS Shreveport, with duty supporting the Marines in Beirut in the early 1980s; and the amphibious ship USS Nassau, out of Norfolk, Virginia.
Leard was an “intel guy” – an intelligence officer – a job that suited him perfectly.
“I’ve always liked puzzles, geography and political science,” he said in an interview at his home. “So my job was to get information, sort it, analyze it and put together my findings.”
That information had to do with whatever “malicious forces” might be up to, he said.
One memorable experience was his duty in Indonesia, he said, when he had to keep his eyes on an Indonesian Navy ship. That was in the mid-1970s, when tensions escalated in East Timor, then a Portuguese colony.
“They were up to something. They were getting ready to invade,” Leard recalled. His analysis found that the Indonesians were “probably going to launch an invasion in the next 24 hours.”
With around 200 Americans – students, tourists and aid workers – in Indonesia, his report was of utmost importance.
Twelve hours after he filed his report, he said, Indonesia invaded East Timor. The next day, he received a message from the White House Situation Room: “Bravo Zulu,” meaning job well done.
“That was kinda neat,” Leard said.
The story of the Charleston commemoration in 1865 so moved Leard that he researched it extensively, he said. Once, when he worked as a minister 15 years after his service, he gave a sermon on it.
“It’s a story that needs to be repeated,” he said. “It’s a piece of history that should not be forgotten. Locals did it out of respect for those who died.”
But the fact that it isn’t widely known, he said, is “like an erasure of our history.”
After Leard’s speech at the PAC, the All-American Boys Chorus, based in Santa Ana, gave a rousing performance.
The Laguna Woods favorite and an annual part of the Memorial Day ceremony performed a medley of spiritual songs, country rock tunes, jazz numbers, Souza marches, the national anthem and “Amazing Grace.”
The boys wrapped up their concert with a salute to the armed forces, singing the official songs of each service: “The Army Goes Rolling Along,” the Navy’s “Anchors Away,” the Coast Guard’s “Semper Paratus,” the Air Force’s “Wild Blue Yonder” and “The Marines’ Hymn” with the line “From the halls of Montezuma.”
American Legion Post 257 Memorial Day poppy drive
“In Flanders Field the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.”
The World War I poem “In Flanders Field” was written by Lt. Col. John McCrae, a Canadian poet who served as a surgeon during the Second Battle of Ypres in Flanders, Belgium.
McCrae wrote the poem to commemorate the fallen soldiers of the conflict, particularly those who died in Flanders. Amid the death and destruction, poppies sprouted among the soldiers’ graves and came to symbolize the sacrifice of those who fought and the beauty that coexists with the ugliness of war.
Since its publication in 1915, the poem has been adopted by the American Legion and its auxiliary, and the poppy has become the official flower to memorialize the fallen. In 1924, the distribution of poppies ahead of Memorial Day became a national program of the American Legion.
In the week before Memorial Day, members of American Legion Post 257 of Laguna Woods and its auxiliary distributed crepe poppies outside Stater Bros. market in exchange for donations to help veterans, their families, and teachers at the Camp Pendleton elementary school.
Alan Clark, the chaplain of Post 257, and his wife, Diane, an auxiliary member, distributed poppies on Monday, May 19.
“The poppies just started coming up out of nowhere,” Alan said, referring to Flanders Field. “They were an inspiration that things will be better and we can recover” after war.
“It’s a way to remember veterans, now and in the past,” Diane added.
American Legion Post 257 has been distributing poppies ahead of Memorial Day since the late 1960s, when the post was established in Laguna Woods, said Jackie Yencer, a retired chief hospital corpsman in the Marines who served two tours in Iraq and Kuwait, and who is the post treasurer.
Laguna Woods resident Bonnie Mika stopped by Yencer’s table to make a donation as she left the grocery store.
“It’s the all-American thing to do,” Mika said, adding that her father and some uncles were veterans and her son served in Vietnam. “We should support positive things like this. I’m tired of all the hate.”
Resident Alice Effendi said she was engaged to a Marine who died in 1971 while serving in Vietnam. It is for his sake, she said, that she has always donated to the American Legion poppy drive.
“Poppies mean something to me,” Effendi said, “because … they meant so much to him.”