The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - The Long Weekend in May - A Brief History of Memorial Day | PPP #77

Episode Date: May 30, 2021

Sharing the devastating loss of life of American Servicemen and Servicewomen and some advancements that came from the terribleness of war. Pause and remember them on May 31, 2021 at 1500. Godspeed all.

What is the cost of a long weekend, the last weekend of May each year? 1.1 million. 1.1 million American lives. Some volunteered, some were conscripted, some were told they had to go. As we fought to become a nation, the numbers aren't quite as clear. As we became a nation that fought ourselves in the civil war and the years hence unfortunately the numbers have been tracked pretty heavily in the civil war we lost 500 000 of our own people fighting against our own people at world war one we went across the atlantic to

help those that couldn't help themselves and lost 117,000. In World War II, yet again, we heeded the call to do what was right and lost 405,000. In Korea and Vietnam, our politics and ideology clashed with others, and in Korea we lost 54,000 and in Vietnam another 90,000. Yet again, American men and women heeded the call when a small country in the Middle East was invaded, and in the Gulf War we lost 1,600 Americans. In the global war on terror and battle, we've lost over 7,000. And throughout these years, with all these wars,

whether it was PTSD, illness, sickness, we've lost many, many more. So every year around this time, we need to ask ourselves, what is the cost of this long weekend in May? 1.1 million people. On this episode 77 of the People Process Progress podcast, the long weekend in May, a history of Memorial Day, I'm going to provide something about the people, the process that we went going from Decoration Day to Memorial Day, and the progress we've actually made through the horrible loss of life of our fellow Americans.

But first, let's get started with this episode of the People Process Progress Podcast in 3, 2, 1. Hey everybody, thanks for coming back to the People Process Progress Podcast, this Memorial Day 2021. With some of the people that I mentioned, the unbelievable loss of life that has given all of us Americans the freedoms that we have, the process of what became the Memorial Day we know today, and what progress we can actually make or that has been made due to conflict. Again, I'm your host, Kevin Pinnell. Please check more out on peopleprocessprogress.com. Connect with me there.

Let's jump into the history of Memorial Day. It was called Decoration Day and it began after the Civil War in 1868. A lot of places, about 25, it says, claim the origin throughout the United States. Among them are Columbus, Mississippi, and Macon and Columbus, Georgia, Richmond, Virginia, Bullsburg, Pennsylvania, Carbondale, Illinois. But the gist of it is, after the Civil War, folks mourned their losses on both sides. They realized the graves were uncovered. There were so many bodies about,

and they wanted to remember their people to decorate their graves, hence Decoration Day. It was called for a while. And both the intro to this episode and other facts, I use mentalfloss.com, history.com, pbs.org, NIH, PubMed, because we have some medical things, taskandpurpose.com. So certainly the numbers of loss and over history vary depending on the source you look at. So those numbers I read in the beginning are from those various sources. You may have some yourself. But how do we get to where we

are this long weekend in May, right? That I think we need to remind ourselves why and the cost, as I mentioned, is pretty terrible. Well, there was that decoration day I talked about. And then throughout the years, folks just kept celebrating that on their own, some independently, some on the same day. And then in 1966, officially, Congress and President Johnson declared Waterloo, New York the birthplace of Memorial Day. So they renamed it to Memorial Day, which is what we celebrate today. In 1971, it became a federal holiday. And in 2000, it became a national moment of remembrance, where at 3 p.m. or 1500 1500 for my fellow military time people out there, we take a moment of silence. I actually saw something today on CBS Sunday morning where

at the same time at 3 p.m. on Memorial Day, they play taps. I know I play taps every Memorial Day to kick off the Memorial Day Murph that I and my friends do. And for those that are listening, that Memorial Day Murph is what Lieutenant Michael Murphy, who was a U.S. Navy SEAL, died in Afghanistan, the workout that he did. And you run a mile, you do 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, and another mile. Least we can do, right? Put some sweat in, build up calluses on our hands, burn our legs out, lungs out, to remember those that didn't make it home. It gave us this ability to have this time with our family and friends. And we shouldn't feel bad about it.

We should celebrate them. We should be sad, sir, for our loss. But the men and women that gave so much for this country from early, early on. From Crispus Attucks, who was the first to die in the battle of the Revolutionary War and the Boston Massacre through, unfortunately, those that we keep losing now from suicide or sickness or insurgency in the Middle East, these are the people this is for. And while we remember our veterans on Veterans Day, this is Memorial Day.

So Memorial Day, we remember those that are lost. What do we have to gain from so much loss of life in battle? I went through and I looked and I knew some of this, but I wanted to see what technologies have come out of war. And so I'm going to share some of that. In the Civil War, the telegraph, right? The wires that sent signals that use Morse code, aerial reconnaissance using balloons, railroads were widely used, and early on the Army Ambulance Corps. So through battle, through carnage, we had to innovate to try and save lives. And World War I tanks were developed. Unfortunately, poison gas, which means we developed antidotes to poison gas air traffic

controls we started more planes and biplanes that of course nowadays as we come out of this pandemic people are traveling more that the groundwork was laid in world war one to help quality air traffic control and keep the skies safe also aircraft carriers think way back then those biplanes coming off a ship for the first time. And now, many countries, particularly the United States, have forward presence with mighty aircraft carriers that are nuclear powered with the most advanced fighting aircraft in the world. And World War II microwaves, radar, meteorology, and early computers, medically blood transfusions, skin grafts from all the burns, and of course there was the atomic bomb.

While the atomic bomb led to so much death and destruction, it also stopped more loss of life. It also helped us advance our energy. In Korea, the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, or if you used to watch the show, MASH, was developed. So doing surgery sooner and having the ability to do a higher level of care quicker from the battlefield, in particular because helicopters became more prominent. In the Vietnam War, field medicine advanced through the use of frozen blood products, meaning that blood products could last longer, particularly in such a hot environment. And unfortunately, folks coming back from the war, post-traumatic stress disorder was officially recognized and acknowledged, whereas in earlier years, shell-shocked or other things, and people were shunned.

After the first Persian Gulf War, stealth technology was all the rage. If you recall, the space-age-looking stealth fighter, stealth bombers were developed. GPS, global positioning systems for navigation, and those smart bombs made so famous by the first kind of videos on CNN with a bomb going through a window. the past couple decades, the global war on terror has been horrible for so many, but also given us the tools here at home to do better with things like mass shootings and trauma. That includes innovation and revisiting the use of tourniquets. I remember when I was a corpsman in the 90s and 2000s, early 2000s, a tourniquet, and even for emergency medical folks was the last thing you did. The fear was we'll lose the limb. Don't put that on. Elevate it. Put pressure on it. Well, through some of the best field medics that have ever lived in the past couple decades, we learned that tourniquets

and early surgical intervention can save limbs and save lives. The whole Stop the Bleed campaign that is being pushed these days is largely based on that and some of the dressings, including the battlefield dressings that reduce bleeding significantly. Pain management, also through the global war on terror for realizing that if I give too much of this pain medicine, I'm going to suppress the breathing of the person I'm trying to save that won't bleed out, realizing we need to give some different medicine. And unfortunately, because of improvised explosive devices and other injuries, we've really had to advance the use of prosthetics to replace limbs. Traumatic brain injury, also much more recognized, diagnosed and treated, vaccine developments, and the process I mentioned that has a direct effect

and has saved lives here at home through both car accidents, shootings, mass shootings, mass attacks, tactical combat casualty care that was led largely from the highly advanced medics and the ranger of Italians that tells us to stop the shooting, get to the person, get a tourniquet on, stop the bleeding, get them to a casualty collection point, get them to the hospital as quickly as possible, is it directly used on the streets today? So what's ahead for us as we remember those that have given so much, given that last full measure, brought these advances home

through their adversity and suffering? To me, I think we're always going to have conflict and war. What I do know, too, is that Americans of all races, religions, and creeds will again show their collective valor. We'll show up where the world needs us. We'll pull together here at home. But we at home must do the same as one team in one fight because it's the right

thing to do. And so I'll borrow the words of James A. Garfield, who gave the first remarks on the first decoration day with a crowd of 5,000. I am oppressed with a sense of the impropriety of uttering words on this occasion. If silence is ever golden, it must be here beside the graves of 15,000 men whose lives were more significant than speech and whose death was a poem, the music of which can never be sung.

End quote. We can never truly repay that debt for those that died for this country and for other folks all around the world, but we can be silent, we can remember them, we can put in a little little sweat and we can be good humans to each other to keep America going. Thank you so much for the time you give listening to the show, visiting the peopleprocessprogress.com website. I hope you stay safe this weekend. Definitely wash your hands and I wish you all Godspeed.