Memorial Services May 1924

Veterans Memorial at Mapleview Cemetery

From the archives of The Crittenden Press, dated June 6, 1924, we can recall the Memorial Day service for the year 1924.

Memorial Day was observed in Marion, as well as other places in the county Friday. Beginning at 2:30 o'clock in the afternoon at the Methodist Church an appropriate program, under the auspices of Ellis B. Ordway Post No. 11 American Legion, was rendered in the presence of a large gathering of people.

A short opening address was made by Post Commander B. E. Woody in which he spoke in glowing germs of his comrades in arms who so nobly fought and lost their lives in preservation of the liberty we now enjoy.

Misses Lavine and Margaret Guess sang an appropriate song followed by an eloquent address by Rev. O. M. Capshaw who paid a tribute to our own brave American soldiers who fought our battles from Washington's day to that of Woodrow Wilson's.

Rev. O. G. Cavanah, in an interesting address, gave a review of the various wars in which our soldier boys were engaged in defending American honor and liberty.

Rev. C. G. Prather gave a history of memorial Day, telling how it originated in the south when three women went to a cemetery to decorate the graves of the boys who wore the Gray and fell in defense of a cause they thought right. When they had finished the work of love to their own soldiers boys, the speaker said, they then place a flower on the grave of each soldier boy who wore the Blue, for their mothers sake.

After standing and singing America and a benediction by the Chaplain the boys of the American Legion marched in uniform from the church to Mapleview Cemetery where the program was continued and the graves were decorated with flowers and taps were sounded.