Memorial Day services at the Home were very impressive, something to be remembered! Ex-pupils and friends of the Home often drove several hours to witness the parades with little girls carrying baskets of peonies, and little boys carrying small flags. Teenaged girls walked beside and behind them, while the band and the Battalion marched ahead and lined both sides of the path that led to the cemetery behind Collier Chapel.

After a brief ceremony, everyone went inside the chapel for the Memorial Service. After lunch, the band and the battalion went into town to participate in Xenia’s ceremony at Woodlawn Cemetery.

This tradition had such an impact that to this day, Ex-pupils return to the cemetery to decorate the graves and to repeat parts of our childhood ceremony. There is no parade route that snakes around the girls’ side of the campus to the path that leads to the cemetery. There is no marching band or battalion of cadets in crisp uniforms who never miss a beat or a step. There is just a small cadre of dedicated Ex-pupils who remember the words on a banner, that many of us saw for the first time in the Home: “Lest We Forget.”