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Rotary of Morristown club member Gary Wilson, often shares historical knowledge with his fellow members. During a recent meeting, he presented statistics and commentary relating to the act of memorializing fallen soldiers.

“We’re a little nonchalant about it,” Wilson said, as he recognized Club Special Advisor Don Baldus who was wearing a hat noting his service in the U.S. Navy.

Wilson was a member of the Rotary AM Club for 25-plus years before the two Morristown clubs merged in 2022. He is a native of Blountville in Sullivan County.

“I came here to Morristown to get a job. In 1972, I got out of the Army,” he said. “It took me a yaer to get a job. In a lot of ways, things were slow in Kingsport and Bristol. Somebody told me, ‘If you’ll go to Morristown, Berkline will hire you.’ And so I came to Berkline, stayed there nine years, met my wife and then went on to other places: Lowland Credit Union, went to Greeneville for a while and then came back to a place called University Loft in Morristown and retired from there.

“I’m a 1948 model,” Wilson said. “I just had a birthday – my brother tells me that 75 is new 55 and I tell him, ‘Wait until you get here.’”

The background of Memorial Day begins with the ending of the Civil War in 1865. It claimed more lives than any conflict in U.S. history, more than 620,000, which required the establishment of the first national cemetery. National cemeteries are stationed near battlefields. One is located in Greeneville: the Andrew Johnson National Park Cemetery.

“It’s a great place to go,” Wilson said. “There are over 2,000 military graves and it has a section for the Johnson family, that’s how it started. It’s a beautiful, interesting place.”

By the late 1860s, Americans in various towns and cities had started holding springtime tributes to the countless fallen soldiers, decorating their graves with flowers and reciting prayers. It’s unclear where exactly the tradition originated. Numerous communities have independently initiated Memorial Day gatherings and some records show that the earliest was by a group of formerly enslaved people in Charleston, South Carolina, less than a month after the end of the war in 1865.

Neverless, in 1966 the Federal government declared Waterloo, New York as the first to offer an official ceremony on Memorial Day.

On May 5, 1868, Gen. John A Logan, who was the leader of the Grand Army of the Republic (the VFW of the day, established for northern soldiers), called for a nationwide day of remembrance: General Order 11.

Wilson shared a portion of the order: “The 30 of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing flowers and otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, whose bodies now lie in nearly every city, village and hamlet church yard in the land. In this observance, no formal ceremony is prescribed, but post and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services out of respect and circumstances may permit. We are organized comrades as our regulations tell us for the purpose, among other things, of preserving and strengthening those ties and fraternal feelings which have bonded together soldiers, sailors and Marines who served in the late rebellion. Their breasts were a barricade between our country and its foes. Their soldier lives were the revelry of freedom to erase in chase and their death a tattoo of rebellious tyranny in arms. We should guard their graves with sacred diligence …”

The day was chosen, May 30, because it was not the anniversary of any major battle in the Civil War.

On the first Decoration Day, Gen. James Garfield may a speech at Arlington National Cemetery. Five thousand people attended and decorated the graves of 20,000 Civil War soldiers buried there.

Many northern states held similar events and reprised the tradition in subsequent years.

“By 1890, each one of the northern states had made Decoration Day an official state holiday. Southern states, on the other hand, continued to honor the dead on separate days until after World War I,” Wilson said. “By the way, Tennessee has several historic and commemorative days on the calendar. They are not state holidays, but they are declared. One is June 3, which is listed as Memorial or Confederate Decoration Day.

“Twenty years ago, I learned that in quite a few people in Greene County, mostly Aftrican American, celebrate Emancipation Day on Aug. 8. On that day in 1863, Andrew Johnson’s wife freed their slaves. At that time it was widely celebrated in Tennessee, with parades in Knoxville and other places.”

For decades, Decoration Day continued to be observed on May 30 (on whatever day it fell) until 1868 when Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May in order to create a three-day weekend for Federal employees. The same law also declared Memorial Day as a Federal holiday.

The VFW stated in 2002, “Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends had undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt this has contributed to the general public’s nonchalance observance of Memorial Day.

“Over the years, Memoral Day has been a day of remembrance, patriotism and reflection. Various traditions have emerged: parades, memorial services, flag ceremonies and the symbolic act of placing flags on the graves of fallen soldiers. Many families also use this occasion to visit cemeteries in honor of their fallen loved ones,” Wilson said.

In June 2009, Wilson began to publish the newsletter for the Rotary AM Club. From 2010 to 2017, he noted each week a casualty of the Vietnam War, someone with ties to Morristown and the surrounding area.

“On 14 August 2012, I reported on the death of Steven Justine Torbett, 26 years old, from Piney Flats, Tennessee. I was born there,” Wilson said. “Sgt.Torbett was wounded on Aug 7, 1969 and passed away on Aug. 14. He was married with one child. His wife was a school teacher. He had been wounded previously and he had 90 days left in Vietnam.

“My parents were acquainted with his parents. His family still runs a greenhouse there on 11E there in Piney Flats. I asked my mother, ‘Did you know about Steven’s death?’ And she said, ‘Yes. Your dad and I went to his funeral and then to his interment there in Boone’s Creek, near Johnson City.’”

“To my surprise, in looking back, a second Piney Flats young men – 21 year old James Humphrey – was killed two days later in Vietnam on Aug. 16. Their funerals were both held at New Bethel Presbyerian Church in Piney Flats, three days apart. They were the only casualties of the Vietnam War in that community.”

On Dec. 10, 2013, Wilson noted the death of U.S. Marine Corp. Staff Sgt. Charles Dean Stringfield, 28, of Harriman, Tennessee. A note was included in online information about the Marine that had been written by his daughter, who had a Morristown address: “I will never forget you, Daddy. You will always be my hero and I will always be your baby girl. I’ll see you again one day. With all my love, your loving and grateful daughter, Angie.”

Wilson realized the address was for a house three doors down from his own home. He contacted ‘Angie’ and she told him that she had been 18 months old when her father left for Vietnam.

“She was pleased that our Club was remembering him. Angie passed away in 2017 from cancer at the age of 50. I later noticed a note on SSgt. Stringfield’s info from his son, Scott, Angie’s brother. He was looking for information about his father, as he was three years old when his father died in Vietnam,” Wilson said.