News Release

Join us in observance of Memorial Day at Antietam National Battlefield

Date: May 17, 2023
Contact: Keith Snyder, 301-432-5124

SHARPSBURG, Md. — On Monday, May 29, 2023, starting at 11:00 a.m., the National Park Service (NPS) will present a Memorial Day Program at Antietam National Cemetery. The Cemetery is located on Rt. 34, just east of Sharpsburg, MD.  

This year’s program includes keynote speaker Dr. James Broomall who will present “A Great but Benign Sorrow: How the Good Death Shaped Memorial Day.” Dr. Broomall is a cultural historian of the Civil War, an Associate Professor of History at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, WV, and the director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War.   

The program will also include music from the Hagerstown Choral Arts and a cannon salute from Antietam National Battlefield's volunteer group, Battery B, 4^th U.S. Artillery. Master Sergeant Geoff Blankenship and Chief Master Sergeant (Retired) Ron Glazer of the 167^th Airlift Wing, Martinsburg, WV, will perform Taps.  

The town of Sharpsburg will commemorate Memorial Day on Saturday, May 27, with a ceremony on the town square at 11 a.m. and the annual Memorial Day Parade starting at 2:00 p.m. In a wonderful tradition, the Sharpsburg Elementary School 5^th grade class will place 5,000 flags at the National Cemetery, one for every headstone, on May 25, in preparation for the holiday.   

Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in service of the United States of America. On May 5, 1868, three years after the Civil War ended, Major General John A. Logan, head of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of United States veterans of the Civil War, established the day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war while serving in the U.S. armed forces with flowers. Ever since 1868, this day of remembrance has been commemorated across the country and in 1971 Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday. 

-NPS-