Bluff Elementary students learn about Memorial Day

By GLYNIS HART
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CLAREMONT — Monday is Memorial Day, but students at Bluff Elementary School held a solemn flag-raising ceremony Friday to learn about the holiday and its meaning. 

Principal Dale Chenette explained that Memorial Day is held on the last Monday in May every year, and that it originated after the Civil War. “For many years this day was known as Decoration Day and it took place in many towns and places in our country,” he said. 

Chenette spoke from the top of the stairs into the building, as the children and teachers stood in a semi-circle around the flag pole. Friday was also National Poppy Day, a holiday celebrated in Europe as well as the United States, honoring and remembering the dead of World War I: after the war, poppies bloomed in unexpected places in Europe — possibly because the soils had been enriched with lime, or because the churned up ground exposed seeds that had been dormant for decades. 

“In World War I on battlefields in France and Belgium where thousands died, red flowers blossomed suddenly among the grave sites, turning graveyards into fields of red. Surviving soldiers saw the poppy as a symbol of their sacrifice,” said Chenette. “Today you will see American Legion members and the American Legion auxiliaries with poppies around town.” 

The students said the Pledge of Allegiance and sang “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” and “It’s a Grand Old Flag.” Then two students raised the flags — the American and the New Hampshire — to the top of the pole, then lowered them to half-mast to commemorate the dead. 

“We’re trying to educate the kids as well as we can,” said fifth-grade teacher Mark Landry. “When they see a statue of a soldier, they can connect with that and understand what it means.” 

The students learned about local monuments, like the one in Broad Street Park, and Miss Wheeler, their music teacher, played “Taps.”