Ten Real Ways to Honor the Fallen This Memorial Day

The hardest part of Memorial Day for many Americans is the absence of a script. Thanksgiving has a meal. Independence Day has fireworks. Memorial Day has a long weekend and, somewhere inside it, a reason for the weekend that most people are not sure what to do with.

The standard advice fails on contact with the actual question. Remember the fallen is a sentiment, not an action. Reflect on their sacrifice is a sermon, not a step. What follows are ten specific things a person can do on Memorial Day. Each is named. Each is achievable in the time of a long weekend. Each connects to a real practice maintained by a real organization or codified in a real law.

1. Observe the National Moment of Remembrance at 3:00 p.m. local time

At 3:00 p.m. on Memorial Day, wherever you are, pause for one minute. The law that asks you to do this is Public Law 106-579, the National Moment of Remembrance Act of 2000. It is the smallest possible commitment the country can ask: sixty seconds. The moment exists because by 3:00 p.m. on Memorial Day, the ceremonies are over, the cemetery visits are done, and the country is at the cookouts. The moment is designed to fit inside the long weekend rather than outside of it.

2. Visit a national cemetery

The Department of Veterans Affairs maintains more than 150 national cemeteries across 44 states and Puerto Rico. Arlington National Cemetery is administered separately, by the U.S. Army. Each one is open to public visitation on Memorial Day. Most hold a public ceremony in the morning. You do not need to know anyone buried there. The cemeteries are for being visited.

3. Volunteer for Flags In or Flags Out

The 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment — the Old Guard — places American flags in front of every grave at Arlington National Cemetery on the Thursday before Memorial Day, and removes them in the days after. Several other national cemeteries run volunteer-staffed equivalents. Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island, for example, accepts public volunteers for its Memorial Day flag placement. VA national cemeteries coordinate volunteer flag placement; contact your local national cemetery for opportunities. The work is straightforward — one flag per grave, one foot in front of the headstone, perpendicular to the row.

4. Donate to a vetted survivor or scholarship organization

Three organizations with strong financial-transparency records and tightly focused missions:

• TAPS — Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. Founded 1994 by Bonnie Carroll, widow of Brigadier General Tom Carroll, after the 1992 C-12 plane crash in Alaska that killed eight aboard. TAPS operates the peer-mentor network the U.S. military did not have for surviving families. Open to all families of fallen servicemembers regardless of how the death occurred.
• Folds of Honor. Founded 2007 by Lt. Col. Dan Rooney, USAF. Provides educational scholarships to the spouses and children of fallen and disabled American servicemembers.
• Bob Woodruff Foundation. Founded 2006 after the journalist Bob Woodruff was wounded by an IED in Iraq while covering the war for ABC News. Funds vetted programs supporting post-9/11 servicemembers and their families.

Verify any organization through GuideStar/Candid or Charity Navigator before donating. Memorial Day attracts charity scams every year.

5. Read one name out loud and learn their story

Pick one American servicemember who died in service. Look up the basic record — name, branch, unit, date and circumstances of death, hometown. Read the name out loud on Memorial Day. This works for anyone — a great-uncle in the Pacific, a high school classmate killed in Iraq, a name selected from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial public registry, a name from the Casualty Search at dcas.dmdc.osd.mil. Saying a name out loud is small. It is also the basic act the day exists for.

6. Attend a local ceremony

Every American town with a war memorial holds something on Memorial Day morning. American Legion posts, VFW posts, and local veterans’ councils organize most of them. The format is consistent: a parade, a flag ceremony, a name reading, the playing of Taps. Local newspapers print the schedule. The ceremony is generally short, free, and open to the public.

7. Fly the flag at half-staff until noon, full-staff after

The U.S. Flag Code, 4 U.S. Code §7(m), specifies that on Memorial Day the flag is to be flown at half-staff “until noon only, then raised to the top of the staff.” Most Americans observe one part of this protocol or the other; few do both. The full protocol has a meaning: the half-staff portion mourns the fallen; the full-staff portion symbolizes the resolve of the living to carry the work forward. Both halves of the day matter.

8. Visit a Gold Star family — or sit with one in conversation

If you know a Gold Star family — parents, spouse, siblings, or children of an American servicemember killed in service — Memorial Day weekend is the right time to reach out. The simplest thing to say is I am thinking of you, and of [name]. Speaking the lost family member’s name aloud is what families repeatedly report as the most welcome gesture. Generic condolences fade. Specific names do not.

9. Read “In Flanders Fields,” or another Memorial Day poem

The country has a small body of public-domain poetry written by servicemembers, doctors, and survivors that holds up. John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” (1915), Walt Whitman’s “Dirge for Two Veterans” (1865), Theodore O’Hara’s “The Bivouac of the Dead” (1847, inscribed at multiple national cemetery entrances). Read one. Read it out loud if anyone is in the room. The poems were written to be spoken.

10. Sit with the day

Of the ten items on this list, the hardest is this one. Memorial Day is not Veterans Day. The dead cannot be thanked. The day asks the living to sit with the fact of absence and to do that without producing anything. No social media post, no public statement, no performance of grief. Just the minute at 3:00, the name out loud, the flag, the visit to the cemetery — and the rest of the day spent with the knowledge that the country had a reason for setting the day aside.

A note on what does not belong on a Memorial Day list

This list does not include “thank a veteran.” Thanking veterans is appropriate on Veterans Day, on Armed Forces Day, and on any other day of the year. Memorial Day is a different observance, oriented toward a different audience — and that audience cannot hear thanks.

This list also does not include retail-driven gestures: Memorial Day shopping events, themed product launches, brand-sponsored social media campaigns. None of those are inherently wrong. They are simply not what the day was set aside for, and they do not belong on a list of things to do about Memorial Day.

The ten items above are an honest catalog. None of them takes more than an hour. Most of them take a few minutes. The cumulative effect, if a person actually does several of them on the same day, is the closest a civilian can come to participating in the work the country set this day aside to do.

Sources

• National Moment of Remembrance Act of 2000, Public Law 106-579.
• 4 U.S. Code §7 — U.S. Flag Code, Memorial Day half-staff/full-staff protocol.
• U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Cemetery Administration — public roster of national cemeteries.
• 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), Arlington National Cemetery — Flags In/Flags Out operations, U.S. Army public affairs.
• TAPS (Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors) — public organizational information, taps.org.
• Folds of Honor — public organizational information, foldsofhonor.org.
• Bob Woodruff Foundation — public organizational information, bobwoodrufffoundation.org.
• Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS), Defense Manpower Data Center — dcas.dmdc.osd.mil.
• John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields,” 1915 — public domain.
• Walt Whitman, “Dirge for Two Veterans,” Drum-Taps, 1865 — public domain.