Memorial Day is not to honor living veterans, but the military personnel who died in the line of duty.

“We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance ... Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no 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,” said U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John A. Logan in 1868.

It was three years after the Civil War ended. Logan was the head of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union veteran...