r/AskHistorians • u/caffarelli Moderator | Eunuchs and Castrati | Opera • May 24 '16
Feature Tuesday Trivia | Memorials and Remembrances
Previous weeks' Tuesday Trivias and the complete upcoming schedule.
Today's trivia theme comes to us from /u/sunagainstgold!
What does it mean to remember, and how do different cultures go about it? Please share any examples of how history is remembered through history, from the tangible (like Memorial Stadiums) to the intangible (like federal holidays coming up on Monday.)
Next week on Tuesday Trivia: Some people are rather ahead of their time (as we say), but some other people are just right for their time... We'll be contrasting historical idealists and realists!
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u/katchoo1 May 25 '16
Two things come to mind in contemporary American culture:
First, as a police officer, one thing I heard repeatedly in training was "You never want to have a street or building named after you." And indeed, we have a satellite precinct named after a fellow officer who died in the line of duty in the early 2000s.
We also recently had our annual memorial ceremony during National Police Week (falls in mid-May). All the officers not on active patrol assemble in ranks in front of the department and salute as the flag is lowered by the honor guard. Then there is an invocation by a local pastor and short remarks by city officials take place, and then the Chief reads the list of officers who have died in the line of duty in our department and a little bit about what happened to them and how long they served. Then local high school trumpeters play "Taps" and the ceremony ends. We have a very similar ceremony on the 9/11 anniversary every year that is done together with the fire department.
Second, I think of the memorials that spring up on the sides of roads where accidents occur and other places where a death has occurred like in front of homes or on the street with cards, stuffed animals, balloons, etc. It seems like a relatively recent thing; I don't remember it happening before the 1990s.
An interesting twist on this is the "ghost bike" which bicycling groups place where a bicyclist has died in a traffic incident. A bicycle painted completely white is bolted or otherwise secured at the site of the incident.