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May 27, 2024

Little Rock National Cemetery hosts solemn Memorial Day tribute with veteran insights

ABC 7 KATV

By: Daniela Dehaghani

Today marks Memorial Day, a solemn occasion observed throughout the nation to pay tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to their country.

At the Little Rock National Cemetery today, family members gathered to honor their fallen loved ones, adorning the headstones with American flags in remembrance. KATV spoke with Beth Sundquist from the veterans' charity organization 'Carry The Load' about the importance of the holiday. She tells us it is a very humbling holiday and an experience that, as a veteran, she will never regret.

"Memorial Day is to me, it is just a humbling holiday because I'm still here on Earth and they're not. You're honoring and remembering the ones that gave the ultimate sacrifice."

Sundquist spoke about the importance of today and how it is a marker of paving the way for our freedom.

“We are here today because they were here before us and they gave the ultimate sacrifice or while we were here, and that ultimate sacrifice is giving us what we can have today.”

She hopes that in the future, barriers such as mental health stigmas can be dropped so that more veterans can receive help if they need it. The organization also strives to make the program readily accessible to support families struggling with the loss of a loved one.

She tells us it is a form of trauma, in itself, losing someone that you have worked with and seen every day - which is why she says their name to "keep them alive".

"If you don't personally know anyone, research someone that was a vet and find out what they did, how they died, tell their story, say their name. You'll sit there and you'll be walking around and all of a sudden, you'll have flashbacks of their memories. It gets you sad because I don't have that person around anymore. People quit jobs all the time, but these people didn't quit, they died or were killed in action. You'll never see them again. It adds to the trauma if you're there when it happens, too. It will eventually lead to more trauma if you don't take care of your mental wellbeing immediately."

Sundquist tells us there is a major stigma with getting help in the service, and most individuals would rather go to other methods for relief.

"They're not fixing the actual problem, but really creating another problem. That's where the departments in the military have failed because we don't have ready access to counseling. Alcoholism, drug addictions are high because they are readily available."

Organizations like 'Carry The Load' help veterans and their families cope with trauma and grief.

She hopes that in the future, the stigma can be dropped so that more veterans can be helped if they need it. There is still hope that these departments and resources can help those in need, along with their families to cope with trauma, grieving, and loss.

"That's where the military needs to be proactive," says Sundquist. "The agency that I retired from saw a high rise in alcoholism. It takes a lot of time and money, around $175,000, just for the initial cost to get them through the door. Then all of a sudden you have someone that starts numbing and go down that path, it can lead to drunk driving, accidents, or even death. If not physical death, a death of their career because of DUIs."

Having outlets to help officers in the line of duty can help them save themselves and protect others and their careers.

"The agency has done a wellness unit to help officers. They now have enacted a policy that if that officer comes forward and says they are an addict, instead of using your vacation or comp time, they will give you 30 days to go to rehab and get clean, without charging you time. Having a safe place to be able to be honest and receive help is a great thing."

"To be able to think with a clear mind and make better judgement calls, would be a great movement. The military needs to be more proactive than reactive in these situations."

"Sable Warrior is a very intense, four-day program, with free housing and food for veterans struggling to cope," Sundquist details. "The program helps you realize the trauma, how to deal with it, most importantly - how to heal. Once you go through it, it has all the of the other program available to direct you to. They're a phone call away. If they can't make it, they will send someone that will help you."

Sundquist tells us mental health has always taken a back seat and now it's coming forward. "I commend those who take that and run with it and start being proactive. If you're reactive, you've already probably lost that person. Being proactive will stop the bad action, by providing them a safe place to be real."

She says that if you want to support veterans on Memorial Day, "Put a flag out. If you see a veteran, thank them. If you see a gold star family, reach out to them and say thank you for their family member's sacrifice for us. A simple thank you is enough. Just the fact that you take out the time to say thank you if enough. The outpower of community support is empowering. The look in their eyes, the tears, it's heartfelt."

Sundquist tells us there are two deaths in life, the day you physically die and the day we quit saying their name.

"That's what Memorial Day is all about. We say their name, keep them living. We can do that for the ones that lost their loved ones in war. What I can say is: Master Sergeant Kenneth N. Mack, killed in action, May 5, 2007 in Al Ambar Province. I say his name, he's not going to die a second death. His name is there."

View the full story here.

May 27, 2024

Five things to know about Memorial Day

American Press

Carry The Load walkers leave Veterans Memorial Park Friday afternoon as they make the 3.14-mile trek to Coolers Icehouse at 3622 Ryan St. Area residents were invited to join the Carry the Load team on the walk. Carry the Load, a nonprofit who's mission is to restore the true meaning of Memorial Day, has grown into a nationwide movement – with five routes covering 20,000 miles across 48 states to honor and remember those who have laid down their lives for their country. The month-long commemoration culminates this weekend in Dallas. Learn more at https://www.carrytheload.org. (Donna Price / American Press)

Memorial Day is supposed to be about mourning the nation’s fallen service members, but it’s come to anchor the unofficial start of summer and a long weekend of discounts on anything from mattresses to lawn mowers.

But for people such as Manuel Castañeda Jr., the day is very personal. He lost his father, a U.S. Marine who served in Vietnam, in an accident in 1966 in California while his father was training other Marines.

“It isn’t just the specials. It isn’t just the barbecue,” Castañeda told The Associated Press in a discussion about Memorial Day last year.

Castañeda also served in the Marines and Army National Guard, from which he knew men who died in combat.

1. Why is Memorial Day observed?

It’s a day of reflection and remembrance of those who died while serving in the U.S. military, according to the Congressional Research Service. The holiday is observed in part by the National Moment of Remembrance, which encourages all Americans to pause at 3 p.m. for a moment of silence.

2. What are the origins of Memorial Day?

The holiday stems from the American Civil War, which killed more than 600,000 service members — both Union and Confederate — between 1861 and 1865.

There’s little controversy over the first national observance of what was then called Decoration Day. It occurred May 30, 1868, after an organization of Union veterans called for decorating war graves with flowers.

The practice was already widespread on a local level. Waterloo, New York, began a formal observance on May 5, 1866, and was later proclaimed to be the holiday’s birthplace. Yet Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, traced its first observance to October 1864, according to the Library of Congress. And women in some Confederate states were decorating graves before the war’s end.

David Blight, a Yale history professor, points to May 1, 1865, when as many as 10,000 people, many of them Black, held a parade, heard speeches and dedicated the graves of Union dead in Charleston, South Carolina. A total of 267 Union troops had died at a Confederate prison and were buried in a mass grave. After the war, members of Black churches buried them in individual graves.

“What happened in Charleston does have the right to claim to be first, if that matters,” Blight said in 2011.

3. Has Memorial Day always been a source of contention?

Someone has always lamented the holiday’s drift from its original meaning.

As early as 1869, The New York Times wrote that the holiday could become “sacrilegious” and no longer “sacred” if it focuses more on pomp, dinners and oratory.

In 1871, abolitionist Frederick Douglass feared Americans were forgetting the Civil War’s impetus — enslavement — when he gave a Decoration Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery.

“We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation’s destroyers,” Douglass said.

His concerns were well-founded, said Ben Railton, a professor of English and American studies at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts. Even though roughly 180,000 Black men served in the Union Army, the holiday in many communities would essentially become “white Memorial Day,” Railton told the AP in 2023.

Meanwhile, how the day was spent — at least by the nation’s elected officials — could draw scrutiny for years after the Civil War. In the 1880s, then-President Grover Cleveland was said to have gone fishing — and “people were appalled,” Matthew Dennis, an emeritus history professor at the University of Oregon, told the AP last year.

By 1911, the Indianapolis 500 held its inaugural race on May 30, drawing 85,000 spectators.

4. How has Memorial Day changed?

Dennis said Memorial Day’s potency diminished somewhat with the addition of Armistice Day, which marked World War I’s end on Nov. 11, 1918. Armistice Day became a national holiday by 1938 and was renamed Veterans Day in 1954.

An act of Congress changed Memorial Day from every May 30th to the last Monday in May in 1971.

Dennis said the creation of the three-day weekend recognized that Memorial Day had long been transformed into a more generic remembrance of the dead, as well as a day of leisure.

5. Why is Memorial Day tied to sales and travel?

Even in the 19th century, grave ceremonies were followed by leisure activities such as picnicking and foot races, Dennis said.

The holiday also evolved alongside baseball and the automobile, the five-day work week and summer vacation, according to the 2002 book “A History of Memorial Day: Unity, Discord and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

In the mid-20th century, a small number of businesses began to open defiantly on the holiday.

Once the holiday moved to Monday, “the traditional barriers against doing business began to crumble,” authors Richard Harmond and Thomas Curran wrote. These days, Memorial Day sales and traveling are deeply woven into the nation’s muscle memory.

Jason Redman, a retired Navy SEAL who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, told the AP last year that he honors the friends he’s lost. Thirty names are tattooed on his arm “for every guy that I personally knew that died.”

He wants Americans to remember the fallen — but also to enjoy themselves, knowing lives were sacrificed to forge the holiday.

View the full story here.

May 27, 2024

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