05/25/2026
In recognition of Memorial Day, we are sharing a speech by Chief of Staff Erin Anhalt delivered at this morning's ceremony:
In the final months of the Civil War, the Confederacy used a racetrack in Charleston as a prison camp for captured Union soldiers. More than 260 of those men died there, of disease and exposure, and were dumped in a mass grave behind the grandstand. One of the first things the newly freed Black Americans did was to give those Union soldiers, the ones who had fought for their liberation, a proper burial. For two weeks they exhumed the bodies and reinterred each and every one. They built a fence around the new graveyard and dedicated it to “Martyrs of the Racecourse.”
Then, on May 1, 1865, about ten thousand people gathered there. Three thousand Black schoolchildren led the procession, carrying armfuls of roses and singing "John Brown's Body." Behind them marched Black Union regiments, including George Jarvis, a Black soldier who enlisted right here in Greenfield to the famed 54th Massachusetts Regiment. They sang, they prayed, and they laid flowers on every grave. Memorial Day, as we know it, was born that day in Charleston, by people who understood, perhaps better than anyone in this country ever has, what it means to owe a debt to the dead.
That is the tradition we carry forward today, here in Greenfield, and in towns across America.
Since we stood in this place one year ago, more than a thousand American service members have died while serving — in training accidents, in aviation mishaps, in vehicle crashes, in operations overseas, and, tragically, by their own hand. Thirteen of those Americans were killed in hostilities in the Middle East. Each one had a name. Each one had people waiting for them. Each one is now a folded flag on someone's mantle.
We also cannot forget those who lose their lives to war injuries that are unseen after they return home. The battle follows women and men into their kitchens at three in the morning; sits with them at dinner tables; and challenges them while they are going on bike rides with their kids. We have lost more service members and veterans to PTSD every single year since 1972 than were lost in combat or training accidents.They are Memorial Day names too. They served. They came home wounded in ways no scan can see. And we owe them every bit as much remembrance, and every bit as much help, as those who fell on a battlefield.
This day sits heavy on me. I was a Navy spouse from 1999 until my husband retired in 2020 which was over twenty one years. If you've been part of a military family, you know it shapes you for the rest of your life. You learn the geography of goodbyes. You learn what a deployment does to a marriage, to a child, to a parent waiting by a phone. You make friends in base housing who become family, and you watch some of those families receive the knock on the door that everyone fears. Once you've been part of that community, the loss of any service member anywhere, any branch, any age hits close. They all feel like ours.
So today, in Greenfield, we remember them. The Union soldiers laid to rest by freed people in Charleston in 1865. The men and women lost in every war since. The ones lost this past year. And the ones still fighting battles inside themselves.
May they rest in peace. May their families know they are not forgotten. And may we be worthy of their sacrifice.
Image description: Spring blooms in Section 35 of Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, VA.
