Honoring the Less than 1%
Dear Founders, Signers and Framers:
Gentlemen, Monday May 28th 2018 we celebrate Memorial Day, a holiday that did not exist back in your time so let me explain. Originally known as Decoration Day, it was a day in which the graves of soldiers who gave their lives were honored. Decoration Day gradually changed to Memorial Day and that term was first used in 1862, still Memorial Day did not become the more common name until after World War II and was not declared the official name by Federal law until 1967. In June, 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act which moved four holidays, including Memorial Day, from their traditional dates to a specified Monday. The change moved Memorial Day from its traditional May 30th date to the last Monday in May. This law took effect at the federal level in 1971.
What this did was basically create a 3-day weekend and create for the consumers and retailers another sale day that diluted the true meaning of the holiday. So now we are bombarded with Memorial Day Sales where we can save 50% on this, 40% on that and an additional 20% on just about anything.
Gentlemen, here are some percentages which I am sure you would approve of and maybe bring us back to reality. It is estimated that since you founded our country over 240 years ago only 6-8% of our total population during all that time has served in the military. As of today, about .5% of the American population is active military.
Since Memorial Day honors those who gave their lives it got me thinking and I did some research and found the numbers I was looking for on the Veteran’s Administration web site. That’s right there is a whole department of government dedicated to caring for military veterans, well at least that is the goal of the VA.
I found that since 1775, when you men got this ball rolling through 1991, almost 42 million people have served in the U.S. Military. Of these 42 million a little over 651,000 have lost there lives on battlefields here and around the world defending us. Now thanks to calculators, an invention that I am sure you Mr. Franklin would find fascinating, I determined that 0.154% of those who served are those we honor. There have been other wars which statistics were not available for, but this makes the point. So, on Memorial Day I am sure you gentlemen would agree that the only percentage that matters is that 0.154%, not how much we can save on socks!
As always, I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Andrew DeMarco
P.S. The statistics mentioned above do not include those wounded or missing in action. If anyone is interested in seeing the VA’s statistics where they list each conflict separately and all the statistics you can go to the following page:
https://www.va.gov/opa/publications/factsheets/fs_americas_wars.pdf
Pen Pals from the Past 