Monday, May 26, 2025
Location: Antietam National Battlefield and National Cemetery
Website: https://www.nps.gov/anti/planyourvisit/memorial-day.htm
The National Park Service will commemorate Memorial Day at Antietam National Battlefield on May 26 at 11 a.m. The program will take place at Antietam National Cemetery, located on Rt. 34, just east of Sharpsburg.
The program will include music from the Hagerstown Choral Arts and Chief Master Sergeant (Retired) Ron Glazer of the 167th Airlift Wing, Martinsburg, WV, will perform Taps.
The keynote address will be delivered by Dr. Jennifer M. Murray, Assistant Professor of History at Shepherd University and the Director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War.
Later in the day, we will offer a ranger guided tour of the battlefield starting at 1PM. Meet the ranger at the visitor center for this 2.5 hr. program.
The Town of Sharpsburg will commemorate Memorial Day on Saturday, May 24, with a ceremony on the town square at 11 a.m. and the annual Memorial Day Parade starting at 2:00 p.m. In a wonderful tradition, the Sharpsburg Elementary School 5th grade class will place 5,000 flags at the National Cemetery, one for every headstone, in preparation for the holiday.
Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in service of the United States of America. On May 5, 1868, three years after the Civil War ended, Major General John A. Logan, head of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of United States veterans of the Civil War, established the day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war while serving in the U.S. armed forces with flowers. Ever since 1868, this day of remembrance has been commemorated across the country and in 1971 Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday.
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