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Like most graduations, the commencement ceremony for the Coast Guard’s Chief Petty Officer Academy a few weeks ago was a fine balance of pomp and conviviality. It was a white-tableclothed, ice-sculptured affair, held in a hotel ballroom near the campus of the Coast Guard Training Center in Petaluma, California. For the 63 chiefs and their families, it was an evening awash with accomplishment, levity, and relief. They and their faculty were dressed to the nines — so much brass and braid that I remarked to the group (as their commencement speaker) that I’d never before donned a tuxedo and felt underdressed.

But the formal dress had point. It reflected the evening’s sober symbolism — including a small table meticulously set with stemware, silver, and a single white candle. Its lone chair backed up against the podium, facing the audience. Before the meal began, a ship’s bell solemnly tolled eleven as an officer lit the candle before the hushed crowd. The table honored those who had lost their lives in service to the Coast Guard. The chair sat empty all evening.

I was reminded of that image this past weekend as the college commencement season arrived and the Memorial Day weekend approached. In the United States, the holiday once called Decoration Day — after the tradition of decorating the graves of the war dead — has since 1868 been celebrated on May 30. In practice, however, it’s always observed on the last Monday of May, creating a long weekend even when (unlike this year) the two dates are separate. Here in Lincolnville, Maine, we still make some attempt at ceremony despite the vacation atmosphere. The high-school band still marches. Aging veterans still turn out in uniform. Local luminaries still give orations over slightly tinny sound systems. And the parade still stops to honor the wooden signboard listing the town’s war dead. These days, however, there’s not much of a crowd. For that, you want to head east along Route 1 to the local garden center, where a different kind of signboard advertises the annual start-of-the-season Memorial Day sale on shrubs, trees, and perennials.

It’s an odd quirk of the calendar, this blending of commencement and summertime and remembrance. In one intense season of ceremony, we send forth the young, salute the dead, and celebrate the coming solstice. Is this right? In this particularly American blend of the commercial, the educational, and the military, are we dishonoring those who went before us? Are we at risk of discounting the sacrifices that helped defend the physical, mental, and moral infrastructure we’ve inherited?

Such questions underlie “In Flanders Fields,” the 1915 poem by the Canadian surgeon John McCrae still recited regularly at remembrance ceremonies. Easily the most popular poem to come out of World War I, it was translated widely, memorized by school children, and responsible for the red lapel poppies commemorating the day — becoming to Memorial Day nearly what “Jingle Bells” became to Christmas:

Do we break faith by turning this holiday into a long weekend and a day of sales? In 2000, President Clinton introduced a “National Moment of Remembrance,” asking the public voluntarily “to pause for one minute at 3:00 P.M. (local time) on Memorial Day to remember and reflect on the sacrifices made by so many to provide freedom for all.” A year earlier, bills were introduced in the Senate and the House to require Memorial Day to be celebrated only on May 30, rather than on the last Monday of May — removing its mini-vacation status, in hopes of concentrating attention on its purposes rather than on the distractions of the coming summer. Not surprisingly, both bills have languished. Asking for voluntary participation from those who care is one thing. Requiring the public and the marketplace to surrender a well-established holiday is quite another.

And perhaps not necessary. Sitting with my Coast Guard companions that evening, I found myself imagining the occupant of that empty chair. What would he or she have wanted? Certainly to be honored, thanked, admired for dedication. But wouldn’t he or she also have taken delight in the camaraderie, the playfulness, the wit? Wouldn’t there have been some deep satisfaction in the sight of new officers joining the leadership ranks? Wouldn’t it have mattered to see a spirited appreciation of what he or she died for — the values underlying the organization, the recognition of the risks involved, and the ongoing commitment to purpose?

Those three things — values, risks, and commitment — define moral courage. We need to celebrate that courage — not as a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence by those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, but as a constant, rhythmic presence in life, integrated into the laughter and labor of all human experience. Memorial Day doesn’t ask us to surrender that laughter. It doesn’t take away summertime or the commencement of new careers for the young. It simply asks us to carry forward the torch of goodness for which others died — and to have, through living, the moral courage for which they sacrificed.

©2005 Institute for Global Ethics