With our recent taste of winter melted (or mostly), summer is in the air and a three-day weekend is coming up.

Though summer doesn’t officially start until June’s summer solstice, I’ve always thought of Memorial

Day weekend as summer’s “kickoff.” School’s out, the weather’s (probably) favorable, and most people take a mini-vacation to spend time with friends and family, do some grilling and relaxing, and maybe take in ballgame.

It’s the perfect time to reflect on why we celebrate and recognize Memorial Day.

I grew up in the small central Pennsylvania village of Boalsburg, one of many towns in the United States that claims to be the birthplace of Memorial Day.

Per town history, in October 1864, two women, Emma Hunter and Sophie Keller, visited the grave of Emma’s late father, Reuben Hunter, who had been a surgeon in the Union army during the Civil War, and decorated it with flowers they’d brought.

In the graveyard full of fallen soldiers, they met Elizabeth Myers, who was placing flowers on the grave of her son, who had died in the Battle of Gettysburg. The three shared memories of their lost loved ones.

That day is marked in Boalsburg’s history books as the first Memorial Day service. The three women agreed to meet again the following year to decorate not only the graves of loved ones who had served, but all soldiers’ final resting places.

The shared their plan with their friends, family and neighbors, and others agreed to take part. They decided to hold a community-wide service that summer, on July 4, 1865, and every grave in the tiny cemetery was decorated with flowers and flags.

According to the USGenWeb site, the scene inspired poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to write “Decoration Day,” a poem that includes this verse:

Your silent tents of green We deck with fragrant flowers:

Yours has the suffering been, The memory shall be ours.

The remembrance ceremony was repeated yearly, and was eventually shifted to late spring.

In 1868, Gen. John A. Logan, then commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, issued an order naming May 30, 1868, “a day ‘for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country ... with the hope that it will be kept up from year to year,’” states the Pennsylvania Center for the Book website.

The commemoration expanded to other states to include all who died in any war or military action, and became known as Memorial Day after World War II. It was held every May 30, but since 1971 has been observed on the last Monday in May.

It was a special time to remember the fallen back in the 19th century, and remains as such today.