Good morning and welcome to a special episode of Kid News. It's Monday, May 26, 2025.

Memorial Day in the United States, which is widely regarded as the nation's unofficial kickoff to summer.

But much more important is its original intent to reflect and remember those who died while serving in the U.S. military.

The observation dates back to the Civil War, which took the lives of more than 600,000 soldiers

between 1861 and 1865. In May of 1868, three years after it ended,

veterans organized a decoration day and called on all Americans to decorate war graves. That was the

first national observance. Locally, it began even earlier. Waterloo, New York basically shut itself down on May 5th,

1866, so the entire town could honor the fallen. Businesses closed and town residents dotted

cemeteries with flags and flowers. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared Waterloo the birthplace of Memorial Day. But it took

until 1971 for Congress to designate the day an official federal holiday and settle on the last

Monday in May for all tributes. For some, making the remembrance part of a three-day weekend,

watered down its focus on war sacrifice. By

1972, Time magazine said the holiday had become a three-day nationwide hoot-nanny that seems to

have lost much of its original purpose. These days, Memorial Day is decidedly a mix. Many Americans

still pause to pay respects, visit cemeteries,

or participate in parades, the largest of which take place in Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C.

Others show their respect by flying the red, white, and blue. According to the U.S. Department of

Veteran Affairs, on Memorial Day, the American flag should be flown at half staff

from sunrise until noon only, then raised briskly to the top of the staff until sunset, in honor

of the nation's battle heroes. A more recent tribute was added in the late 1990s. As the story goes,

Today.com reports, a group of kids was asked

what Memorial Day meant when they answered, that's the day the pools open. Then President

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