Memorial day (for non Yanks)

[Gob]

It was once a divisive commemoration of fallen soldiers on one side in the US Civil War. Now Memorial Day brings a nation together, says David Cannadine in his Point of View column


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8722432.stm

Last weekend was one of those rare occasions, along with Christmas and New Year, when public holidays on both sides of the Atlantic exactly coincided, since Monday was Memorial Day in the United States and the Spring Bank Holiday in Britain.

I've never quite connected with the Spring Bank Holiday, which has replaced the more traditional Whitsun Holiday, and vaguely rebranded it in a secular guise; while May Day, which is held on the first Monday of the month in Britain, is a rather strange amalgam of traditional maypole dancing and international working-class solidarity.

Memorial Day, by contrast, has been firmly etched in my mind and in my memory since the first such holiday weekend I spent in the United States during the early 1970s. Having finished a year as a rather tongue-tied graduate student, I was travelling round North America, seeing some of the sights, when I found myself spending that weekend with a most hospitable family in Phoenix, Arizona.

They took me out for a desert picnic among the rocks and the cacti in the neighbouring countryside, which was a strange landscape entirely new to me, and on the Sunday evening, my host told me that the next morning, we'd be going to a breakfast meeting of an organisation I'd never heard of called Toastmasters.

I accepted this invitation with enthusiasm, naively anticipating a fabulous breakfast, with scrambled egg and smoked salmon piled atop the most exquisitely produced and delicately flavoured toast that it would ever be my privilege to eat. But on our way to this early gathering, I was abruptly disabused of these ignorant and voracious expectations.

Far from being devoted to perfecting the cooking of breakfast, my host explained, Toastmasters was an international organisation that had originally been founded in the United States during the early 1920s, and its clubs and branches aimed to help their members improve their communication skills, their public speaking and their leadership abilities.

They meet on a regular basis, which might be weekly or monthly, when some of those attending deliver prepared or extemporaneous speeches, and offer each other critical feedback about what they've said and about how they've said it. Throughout its history, more than four million people have been members of Toastmasters, and today the organization boasts over a quarter of a million members belonging to more than 10,000 clubs located in 100 countries.

It was originally known as Decoration Day, and it was first observed to honour soldiers who'd fought for the north during the American Civil War - this didn't play well in the south

As we journeyed into downtown Phoenix on that hot Memorial Day morning, I was less impressed by the good work which Toastmasters undoubtedly did (and does) in helping people develop their speaking skills than by what I feared might be an unspecified oratorical ordeal awaiting me. This turned out to be a well-justified anxiety. Several members made speeches whose high quality I still admiringly recall, but when the last of them sat down there was an ominous pause, at which point my host got up and introduced me to his colleagues - all of whom were men, since Toastmasters had only very recently been opened up to women.

Warming to his theme, my host went on to point out that as a Briton, I came from a nation renowned for its eloquence and for its fine use of language, and for its unrivalled line of parliamentary orators extending from Churchill back to Pitt the Elder. So what, he now asked me, in the light of the incomparable heritage of public speaking to which I was the heir, did I think of the proceedings I'd just witnessed and of the speeches I'd just heard?

During the small-talk of breakfast, and while listening to what had been said, I'd had no opportunity to put even the most banal of precautionary thoughts together. But I clearly had to say something. Rising to my feet, my mind a complete blank, I suddenly found myself blurting out that I'd recently visited the nation's capital, where I'd seen many uplifting words and famous phrases carved on its buildings and embellishing its monuments.

But nowadays, I stumbled on, when hearing the mangled syntax of most Americans, it was impossible to believe that such eloquence still thrived here in the Great Republic. But, I concluded, on what I hoped was a sufficiently up-beat and complimentary note, having listened to some of those members present speaking that morning, it was clear that I'd been mistaken in that negative and hostile impression.

Having just about got away with this incoherent piece of bumbling flattery, I was instantly elected an honorary member of the Toastmasters Club of Phoenix. It was a much more generous response than my faltering words deserved, and I've never trespassed further on their good nature by daring to make a repeat appearance.

Every year, when the Memorial Day weekend comes round, I recall this episode with what I can only describe as a sort of nostalgic shudder. Yet there are many Americans for whom Memorial Day must prompt recollections of a very different kind, with scarcely any nostalgia but with a great deal of shuddering. As its name suggests, this federal holiday commemorates those who died while serving in the US military.

But it was originally known as Decoration Day, and it was first observed, in a rather narrow and sectarian manner, as a means of honouring the Union soldiers who'd fought for the north during the American Civil War. This didn't play well in the south, where many states refused to observe Decoration Day. But in the aftermath of the two world wars, the name and the observance of what was becoming known as Memorial Day became increasingly widespread across the whole of the United States.

In 1967, Memorial Day was declared the official name by federal law, and in 1971, which was only three years before my Phoenix adventure with the Toastmasters, it was decreed that in future Memorial Day would not be held, as had been previous practice, on 30 May, wherever in the week that fell, but on the last Monday in that month, so as to create a long holiday weekend.

In many ways, Memorial Day in the United States has more in common with Remembrance Day in Britain than with either of the two May Day holidays that are held on this side of the Atlantic. Poppies are sold during the weeks leading up to the day itself, there are ceremonials and observancies at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia and in many towns and cities across the country, and the president customarily delivers an address extolling the bravery and self-sacrifice of Americans serving in uniform around the globe.

But in addition to being an occasion for celebrating patriotic duty, the long Memorial Day weekend is also (as I discovered in Arizona) a good opportunity for the private pleasures of family gatherings, outdoor picnics and leisurely barbecues. And as well as being an occasion for looking backwards, and for enjoying the present, Memorial Day is also a time for looking forwards, since it marks the unofficial beginning of the American summer.

One result is that, by convention, during the three months that follow Memorial Day, businessmen are allowed to wear lighter weight and lighter coloured suits to work, until the Labor Day weekend brings the hot and humid summer season to a close in early September.

But for many Americans, the Memorial Day weekend means something else again, and that's the Indianapolis-500 mile automobile race, which was held for the 94th time last Sunday. The first such event took place on 30 May, 1911, and it was won by Ray Harroun, who was the only driver racing without a mechanic on board, and whose car was fitted with a striking new invention - namely the rear view mirror.

The 1930s were a lean time, and racing was suspended during the Second World War, but in 1945, the track was sold to Anton Hulman Jr, and he spent millions of dollars turning the Indianapolis 500 into what was soon being called "the greatest spectacle in racing", watched by 400,000 spectators overlooking a state of the art track.

The race has been an annual event since 1946, it's been broadcast live in its entirety since 1953, and it's now in the midst of a three-year period of centennial celebrations. There are fewer than 40 drivers taking part, but there are many more who vainly attempt to get through the lengthy and arduous qualifying procedures. Goodness knows what I might have been called upon to attempt if I'd spent my first Memorial Day weekend among the racing car fraternity of Indiana rather than with the Toastmasters of Arizona.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8722432.stm