Vietnam Veterans of America held their annual Memorial Day Candlelight Vigil Sunday night, May 24th
May 25, 2015
Clarksville, TN – On Sunday, May 25th, the Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 396 held their annual Candlelight Vigil to remember the men and women who were left behind in Vietnam when American forces withdrew in 1975.
It is a solemn occasion when a nation gathers together to honor its soldiers, those who lived to come home, but even more importantly those who did not.
LTC (Retired) Jose Garcia delivering the keynote address at the 2015 Vietnam Veterans of America Candle Light Vigil.
Clarksville Area Memorial Day Events
May 29, 2011
Written by the Women Veterans of America Chapter 20
Clarksville, TN – Three years after the Civil War ended, Maj. Gen. John A. Logan, head of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union veterans, established May 30th as Decoration Day, a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. It is believed that date was chosen because flowers would be in bloom all over the country.
Gen. Logan’s order for his posts to decorate graves in 1868 “with the choicest flowers of springtime” urged: “We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. … Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.”
Women Veterans of America Chapter 20
