NOVEMBER 2019 A SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT OF TAYLOR PRESS
CELEBRATING OUR VETERANS
100 Years of Veterans Day THE HISTORY OF VETERANS DAY In the United States, President Woodrow Wilson declared November 11, 1919, as the first commemoration of Armistice Day, which was originally intended to involve parades and public meetings and a brief suspension of business beginning at 11:00 a.m. Congress made Armistice Day a legal holiday in 1938, declaring it “a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace.” In 1947, a World War II veteran named Raymond Weeks organized a “National Veterans Day” in Birmingham, Alabama. His intention was to expand Armistice Day into a holiday that celebrates all veterans, not just those from World War I. This idea was later championed by U.S. Representative Edward
Rees of Kansas, who proposed a bill that would officially change Armistice Day to Veterans Day. The bill was passed in 1954, and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who later that year issued the first “Veterans Day Proclamation,” which read in part, “In order to insure proper and widespread observance of this anniversary, all veterans, all veterans’ organizations, and the entire citizenry will wish to join hands in the common purpose.” This year, veterans and citizens alike should again unite to appreciate the service of all veterans, with special attention paid to the century that has passed since peace was achieved with an Armistice signed on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
THE HISTORY OF ARMISTICE DAY Armistice Day was born out of World War I, or “The Great War,” as it was initially known. The global conflict lasted from 1914 to 1918, and pitted the Central Powers—Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire—against the Allies, or Entente Powers, consisting principally of France, Great Britain, Japan, Italy, Russia and the United States. The First World War mobilized over 70 million military personnel, 60 million of whom were European, and the massive scale led many to optimistically, yet wrongly, predict that it would be “the war to end all wars.” See VETERANS • page 3