Memory Of Fallen Heroes

MEMORY OF FALLEN HEROES

Memorial Day Tributes of Love and Respect

DURING TOMORROW

The Veterans Who Remain Will Honor Comrades Who Have Passed Away

This is Decoration Day. As in every other city in the Union, so in Ann Arbor will the memory of the old soldiers, who have gone before, be fittingly honored.

At 9 o'clock this morning a detail of members of the Post, consisting of P. Irwin, Michael Donahue, F. Markley, Hi. A. Sweet and Wm. A. Clark will report at the basement of the court house, from whence after receiving flowers they will go by carriage to St. Thomas' cemetery, where they will decorate the graves of their comrades who have passed away.

At ten o'clock and previous to the starting of the detail for St Thomas' cemetery, the members of Welch Post will meet at their hall and from there proceed in a body to Fairview and Forrest Hill cemeteries, where the graves of the old soldiers buried there will be garlanded with flowers.

In the evening at University Hall the following program will be given,  commencing at 8 o'clock:

Music—Columbian Organ: Prof. A. A. .Stanley.

Devotional—Reading Scriptures and Prayer: Rev. Mr. Tedrow

Music—While Old Glory Waves: Ann Arbor Mandolin Club

Song—Mr. Willis Johnson

Oration—Rev. E. S. Ninde, of the First Methodist Church.

Music—Mr. Volunteer: Ann Arbor Mandolin Club

Benediction—Rev. Mr. Tedrow, of the English Lutheran Church.

Under the reorganization of G. A. R. posts Welch Post of this city came into existence on May 8, 1883. A post, of course, existed here previous to that time, but because of the creeping in of political discussions, it was disbanded along with other posts of the state. Since the reorganization, politics has not been allowed into the work of the organization either in this city or elsewhere. The charter members of Welch Post under the new organization are as follows:

Henry S. Dean, Charles E. Greene, W. H. Jackson, Wm. A. Clark, O. F. Webster, Robert Campbell, E. S. Manly, Conrad .Noll, A. F. Marten. E. F. Gilbert, Thomas Kearns. Wm. Campion, Patrick Irwin, J. B. Saunders, W. J. Clark, Frederick Pistorius, J. T. Jacobs, W. W. Nichols, W. E. Walker, Charles B. Davison, H. C. Clark and Charles H. Manly.

Those who have been charter members of the Post under the new organization but have answered to the last roll call are W. B. Smith, S. B. Revenaugh, Stephen Fairchild, William H. Fisher, J. H. Stark, Patrick Kennedy, J. H. Price, Christian Schumacher, Isaac Keenman, A. C. Bliss, George C. Mogh, Albert Gardner and Michael Conahere.

The active members of the Post today are H. S. Dean, C. E. Greene, Wm. A. Clark, J. Q. A. Sessions, Walter H. Jackson, P. Irwin. J. B. Saunders, Conrad Noll, Wm. J. Clark, Robert Campbell, F. Pistorius, M. Donanue, Robert McCardy, W. F. Breakey, J. J. Schonz, John L. Cox, Herman Krapf, Wm. Walsh, Wm. K. Childs, Elliott Williams, Harrison Soule, A. D. Markham, Silas P. Hill, N. Woodmansee, J. A. Cushing, J. M. Perkins, J. H. Wenb, Q. A. Turner, Hi. A. Sweet, F. Markly, Wm. Acton, H. P. Lamb, L. Gross, H. P. Danforth, C. S. Elmer, John W. Moroney, R. A. Jenney, H. J. Pearson. A. S. Lyon.

FLOWERS THEIR TRIBUTES OF LOVE

Writing of Memorial Day in the Detroit Tribune Pruella Janet Sherman says:

Over the land a wave of fragrance sweeps. Gardens are rifled of their choicest treasures, fields, meadows and woodland are searched for offerings. And upon the graves where soldiers sleep are laid the tributes. Whether in groups, guarded by gleaming white monuments, whether lying solitary and alone; whether beneath northern soil or under southern skies, Memorial Day brings gentle hands filled with flowers, and the mounds that cover the nation's dead bloom briefly with color and sweet perfume. It is an annual floral day, observed in honor of the brave and noble men who died that others might have what is more precious than life - their liberty.

Some there are in every community who remember those days when war was abroad in our own land; when brother turned against brother, and son against father. Men recall with a martial thrill the call to arms, and women, with bitter tears still blinding their eyes, perhaps now faded and dim, do not forget the husbands and sons who marched away and came again no more. If the graves of these are near at home, they will blossom on Memorial Day with the tributes of love; if their resting places are on the far-away southern plains, or, more bitter still. among the "unknown," yet flowers will be sent. with the clinging hope that some of their perfumes will scent the air above the graves of their own lost ones. Never, as long as one human heart throbs that knew of those times of conflict will the graves of our soldiers lie barren and bloomless on Memorial Day.

And there are still other and later graves in our cemeteries, and in distant places around which sweet southern seas, in which rest the forms of brave boys who fought and died under the awful fiat of war. More fresh in the memory, but not more clear, these., too become, upon Memorial Day, mounds of springtime blossoming. A soldier is a soldier, and while the terrors of war may not be as definitely realized when in action beyond the seas as when within our own territories, the honor and the love given is the same devout and sacred emotion. And so the soldiers of two wars sleep in our land, sleep under the flowers spread over the graves on Memorial Day.

Memorial Day, formerly better known as Decoration Day, was made a public institution by Gen. John A. Logan, during his term as commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, from 1868 to 1871, when he appointed the 30th day of May tor this observance. The idea, having thus taken more definite form, began to spread over the land. It was a thought that appealed to the patriotic and the sympathetic heart, and rapidly took root and became an established annual proceeding.

But back of all this lies the fact that the observance of placing flowers on soldiers' graves at a certain date in the springtime originated with a Michigan woman, a resident of Hudson. This woman, perhaps, entertained no greater love for the fallen dead than did many of her sisters; possibly her patriotism was no stronger; but her mind conceived the thought of decorating the graves of the "boys in blue" each year, as a tribute to their courage and patriotic death. So, when the wild flowers began to blossom on the hillside and in the woodlands, and the early garden plants began to yield their bloom, this woman, alone and without any pomp or ceremony, gathered her arms full. and walking to the cemetery, placed upon each grave where she knew a soldier slept a cluster of color and fragrance. To her it seemed but a small act of reverence and remembrance, but it was the seed from which later sprang the now national observance honored throughout the land.

THE FADING AWAY OF A DYING ARMY

Figures contained in the report of the last annual encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic show that more soldiers of the war of the rebellion have passed to the great beyond than now answer "here" where their valor and patriotism accomplished so much for the Union and the world. Like a great rock ceaselessly beaten by the surf of the sea, a dying army has faded away before our eyes, until the mighty hosts of the dead outnumber the living.

From the founding of the first array post in 1866 the membership of the organization gradually increased until the high water mark was reached in 1890, when the total was 409,489.

Each year since has seen a steady decline, and no sadder indication of the dissolution of the Grand Army of the Republic can be had than the fact that the average age of the veteran of today is 64 years, for the shadow of death falls with the suddenness of night upon those who have left their three-score years behind them.

The last year has seen a serious upward bound In the list of the dead, and for some years to come this figure will rapidly increase until the lessening number of the veterans finally reduces it to zero.

In 1890, with the record-breaking membership of nearly half a million, only 5,476 deaths were registered, or 1.33 per cent; a decade later, with the roll reduced to 269,507, the death list had crept up to 8,966. or 3.02 per cent. what the report of the next national encampment will unfold in this tragic story of a dying army is a matter of conjecture, but it is quite safe to say the mortality will have run up to 5 per cent, or one death in every 20; and what is true of members of this organization must be equally so of those veterans whose names are not enrolled upon its roster.

The time was, and that not in the distant past, when the Grand Army of the Republic was looked upon as one of the mightiest of social organizations. Pre-eminently a non-partisan body, hardly a move was made at the helm of government until the pulse of this vast army of voters had been carefully considered. Its very power lay in the unalterable loyalty with which it clung to the precepts of its originators, Stephenson and Rutledge. Unified as a benevolent order, its tremendous influence was sought in the issues of a dozen fierce campaigns, and "the rights of the veteran" has at one time or an other been the battle-cry of every political party since the days of Grant.

With its decline, and the decision to let the Grand Army die with him whom destiny ordains last to bear its motto to the grave, has come a great and sudden change. The faltering thousands that now pass in review of the sons and daughters for whom they perpetuated a country, are not the men of the mighty host under whose feet the streets thundered in the days of Harrison and Cleveland. The hundreds of thousands who then looked with a nation's pride upon a vast army still in the flower of its strength, still the lively, singing. quick-stepping boys of '63, with the old time spirit and all of the old time patriotic blood coursing through their veins, look today upon another and sadder spectacle. But still they are the "boys," bent, white-haired, with ranks woefully thinned, fired with an undying pride and the glorious knowledge of deeds well done.

Death has touched few places less heaviIy than Michigan. During the aeven years closing with December, 1900, 2,775 members of the Michigan departmen were numbered wlth the dead, or a yearly average of less than 2.5% per cent. While a supreme effort has been made to offset this steady decrease by adding new members, the roster has grown smaller and smaller with each succeeding year, until in 1901, with 333 deaths, it has dwindled down to less than 15,000.