Each year, in addition to placing upwards of 500 flags on veterans' graves across seven local cemeteries, and performing military honors at each cemetery on Memorial Day's legal holiday, Virginia Post 17/Squadron 17 assists in a traditional Decoration Day ceremony at Staunton National Cemetery on the traditional date of May 30.

The event at Staunton National Cemetery is sponsored by the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW) which is the legal heir and representative of the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.). The G.A.R. was the principal veterans' organization for Union Civil War veterans, a model for the VFW and American Legion, and the first and largest racially integrated organization of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was the G.A.R. that started the national observance of Decoration Day/Memorial Day with MG John Logan's General Order No. 11, as commander in chief of the G.A.R. on May 5, 1868.

The ceremony includes: an invocation; a description of the origins of Memorial Day from Decoration Day; the reading of General Order No. 11 establishing Decoration Day; and the performing of honors and sounding of taps.

This commemoration started in 2018 with the 150th anniversary of Memorial Day and connects our remembrance of all who have given "the last full measure of devotion" to our Constitution, country and freedom.

"...Let no wanton foot tread rudely on such hallowed grounds. Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.

"If other eyes grow dull, other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain in us...."