05/25/2026
I worked with a friend and decorated veteran and wanted to share this today on Memorial Day. The City’s Memorial Day service on Saturday was a great reflection on the meaning of this holiday.
A Memorial Day Message · Remember Them. Remember Why.
To the Veterans, Gold Star Families, Service Members, and Citizens of Lansing:
This Memorial Day arrives at an extraordinary moment in our shared story. In just six weeks, the United States of America will mark its 250th birthday, a quarter of a millennium of self-government built, defended, and renewed by ordinary people who chose to serve something larger than themselves. We mark that anniversary together, as a nation. But today, on the final Monday in May, we pause first to do what every generation of Americans before us has done: we remember the men and women who did not come home. They are why the 250th is possible.
A Lansing Story, Woven into the Nation's
Lansing has been Michigan's Capital City since 1847, one hundred seventy-nine years this summer. We are younger than the Republic by 71years, but our community has stood beside our country in every conflict since the United States Civil War. From the volunteers of the Michigan regiments who marched south in the 1860s, to the doughboys who shipped from our train stations in 1917, to the GIs who left Lansing factories and farms for North Africa, Italy, France, and the Pacific in the 1940s, to the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and Guardians who have served in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and who serve today our Capital City has always answered the call.
The Michigan State Capitol, dedicated in 1879 and a National Historic Landmark, is more than a seat of government. It is a memorial in its own right. Its rotunda holds replicas of battle flags carried into combat by Michigan's sons and daughters. The original flags are tattered because someone carried them. They are preserved because someone did not come back to put them away.
Who We Honor Today
Memorial Day is not Veterans Day. The distinction matters, and we owe it to the service men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice. Today we honor those who died in the service of the United States, the more than one million Americans who have given their lives in uniform since 1775. We honor the families who received the folded flag, and who carry an empty chair to every birthday, every graduation, every holiday.
In Lansing, that loss has a face and a name. It is etched on the Michigan Vietnam Memorial along the Capitol grounds. It is read aloud at our Memorial Day ceremonies at Mt. Hope Cemetery and Evergreen Cemetery. It is spoken by VFW posts and American Legion halls, by fraternal organizations and faith communities, by neighbors who quietly tend the headstones of strangers because that is the kind of city we are.
And to Those Who Continue to Serve
I want to speak directly to the veterans who are reading this letter. Your service did not end at separation or retirement. You still serve as coaches, as mentors, as teachers, as small business owners, as commissioners, as block club captains, as first responders, as members of the Michigan National Guard standing watch in armories across this state. You serve when you sit with a younger veteran in crisis. You serve when you walk a casket to its place. You serve when you stand for the colors and teach a young one why.
To the active duty service members from the Lansing area, and to the men and women of the Michigan Army and Air National Guard whose service to state and nation runs through our community, please know that your Capital City sees you, thanks you, and stands ready to support you and your families. As America turns 250, you are the living proof that the experiment is still working.
Memorial Day in the Year of the 250th
Two hundred and fifty years is a long time for any idea to survive. It is longer still for an idea as fragile and as demanding as self-government. The Declaration of Independence was a promise written in ink in Philadelphia in 1776, but it has been kept and is being kept in blood and in service, generation after generation. The Semi quincentennial is a celebration of that promise. Memorial Day is the reckoning that makes the celebration honest.
Today, we lower our flag to half-staff until noon. We stand in cemeteries. We say the names. We thank the Gold Star mother. We join in a moment of silence at 3:00 PM during the National Moment of Remembrance that settles over our city like a benediction.
On behalf of the City of Lansing, I extend my deepest gratitude to every family who has given a loved one in service to this country, and to every veteran who carries that loss with them every day. You are why we are still here. You are why we can still call ourselves Americans.
May God bless our fallen, comfort their families, watch over those who serve today, and keep the Capital City worthy of their sacrifice.
With profound respect and abiding gratitude,
Mayor Andy Schor
