Remember our veterans and family members

Being the gardener she has always been, Mom Lestrud would get down on her knees and plant flowers at her parents' graves in Albert Lea's Lakeview Cemetery.
Remembering her parents was not only an annual ritual, it was her duty she believed.
This tradition has been kept alive by myself and my wife by buying almost-real flower arrangements for my parents' graves and for our daughter Tammi's grave. We also pay tribute to our veteran relatives who are buried at the Red Oak Grove Lutheran Church cemetery.
Memorial Day is a most loving day because we take time to pause and pay tribute to our veterans and we also bow to our close family members.
Blooming Prairie veterans do an excellent job of paying tribute to our veterans. Members of the local American Legion and VFW and auxiliaries and the Sons of the American Legion put together activities to remember our veterans and others.
Memorial Day became a national holiday for honoring and mourning the military personnel who have died in the performance of their military duties while serving the United States Armed Services.
Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day. It is now a national holiday. The holiday is observed on the last Monday of May. The holiday was formerly observed on May 30 from 1868 to 1970.
We should be forever thankful for the sacrifices were made in history by our devoted service men and women. Memorials are found in many area communities like Blooming Prairie, Dodge Center and Medford.
It took only five years for Blooming Prairie to finance the construction of one of the most beautiful memorials around.
Wikipedia says In April 1865, following Lincoln's assassination, commemorations were widespread. The more than 600,000 soldiers of both sides who died in the Civil War meant that burial and memorialization took on new cultural significance.
Under the leadership of women during the war, an increasingly formal practice of decorating graves had taken shape. In 1865, the federal government also began creating the United States National Cemetery System for the Union war dead.
By the 1880s, ceremonies were becoming more consistent across geography as the GAR provided handbooks that presented specific procedures, poems, and Bible verses for local post commanders to utilize in planning the local event. Memorial Day is a day we all should pay respects to our fallen veterans. That respect should be shown every day of the year.
Thank you for your service, military service men and women.