The nation could use a Public Service Day, too.

So that Memorial Day does not become “just another day off,” I decided to ponder its origin and meaning. 

I heard a TV host say Americans will “celebrate” Memorial Day. I found that jarring. The person who wrote that into the MSNBC script picked the wrong verb. “Observe” would suffice because there’s nothing to “celebrate” on a day that was set aside long ago, after the Civil War, to remember the nation’s war dead and to decorate their graves. That’s what it’s about. Some present it as a day to honor veterans, too, but that’s what Veteran’s Day is for, in November.

Memorial Day — a day in May to take a minute out of American life to remember the darkest times of the nation’s history and the men and women who volunteered or were drafted into the military and died in service to the country.

This takes me back to my hometown in Massachusetts.

I think of Peter Moskos, the young Marine who was killed in battle in Vietnam. He was the police chief’s son, a graduate of my high school. I was an altar boy at his funeral Mass. In 1982, when the Vietnam memorial opened in Washington, I was working for the Baltimore Evening Sun and WBAL-TV. I looked for Peter’s name on the polished black granite walls, and when I found it, I wept.

I think of Gordon M. Craig, whose image appeared as an oil painting, encased in glass with his Medal of Honor, in the lobby of my high school. We walked past that painting every school day for four years. 

Gordon Craig enlisted in the Army after he graduated from East Bridgewater High in 1948. He ended up in the war in Korea. Early in the war, in September 1950, during the battle of Ka-San, he smothered a North Korean hand grenade with his body to save other guys in his unit. He was one of 600 Americans who died during that battle. There’s a bridge named after him in my hometown. The high school I attended has since been torn down and replaced by a much larger one. Last I heard, Gordon Craig’s portrait still hangs on a wall for all to see.

I look back at the placement of his painting in the high school lobby. I used to stare at it and wonder what Gordon Craig was like. When you’re a kid, everyone seems so much older, of course — the teachers, the coaches, and the alumni around town. Gordon Craig had turned just 21 a month before his death. I look at his Army photograph now and I see his youth, a certain confidence and prideful dignity about being in uniform for his country. I think of him and so many other soldiers and sailors denied a long life; it makes me sad, grateful and angry that human beings keep finding ways to go to war.

One last thing about Memorial Day, a thought that’s been incubating for a long time, based on what I’ve seen as a journalist for five decades: I wish we had a separate day to honor all those who served the country as civilians. 

I don’t know what we’d call it. Public Service Day? (If such a thing already exists, I’ve never heard of it.)

It’s important to honor our war dead. But there are millions who served this country in many ways — as scientists, educators, diplomats, social workers, doctors and nurses, FBI agents, intelligence agents, engineers, firefighters and police officers, postal carriers, prosecutors, paramedics, public defenders, planners, judges, administrators, and as Peace Corps and Vista volunteers who answered JFK’s challenge to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

I believe a root of the country’s problems today — the political tribalism, the obsession with guns, the toxic anger inside the body politic — is that too many Americans have come of age without an in-the-bones appreciation for the common welfare. I’m not sure how that happened, but it did. Some politicians have been tearing down government since the Reagan era, denigrating public service. Only one of them, the late John McCain, stood up for public service, and not only in the military. The nation needs an engaged, vigilant citizenry and a new generation of leaders who are competent, compassionate and smart, who believe in the value of good government, and who care as much about the future of this democracy as McCain did. Celebrating those who served the country in all ways — in the military and civilian life — would be a good way to restore the sense of duty and selflessness that the nation needs.