At the Mineola Memorial Day ceremony at Memorial Park on Monday, May 31, Hampton Street School second grade student Kundhavi Nandakumar read her compositions on Memorial Day in front of the entire crowd gathered to pay tribute to our nation's veterans. Kundhavi spoke with poise and her composition impressed everyone at the ceremony. Here is her composition:

The soldiers were fighting over whether or not the U.S.A. would remain one country in the Civil War.

The Southern soldiers wore gray and the Northern soldiers wore blue.

People ended up fighting their brothers, sons and cousins.

The war began in 1861. The soldiers fought for four long years. Thousands of soldiers were killed before the war ended in 1865.

When the soldiers could go home, they felt happy that the war ended, but they felt other things too.

One thing the soldiers were worn out.

The soldiers had been fighting for four long years and many of them had been injured. Some soldiers lost hands or arms and some lost feet or legs. The soldiers knew that their lives were going to be very different than they had before the war. Some soldiers had seen their friends and relatives die on the battlefields and others didn't find out until they got home that their brothers and fathers had been killed in war.

In the South where many of the battles had taken place and hundreds of soldiers arrived home, they saw that their homes had been burned to the ground.

Henry C. Welles, a druggist in Waterloo, New York, saw the soldiers return to his home town. His feelings were mixed. He felt happy that the war was over, but he felt a lot of sadness too. He said, "We should do something to honor the soldiers who fought so hard for us and something to honor those who lost their lives.

Henry C. Welles thought that Waterloo should hold a celebration to honor those who had died in the war. People would decorate their graves with flowers and flags and to honor the soldiers who went home, called veterans. They could have a parade on the way to the cemetary.

On May 5, 1866, the people in Waterloo honored the soldiers of the Civil War and they called their celebration Decoration Day. Another man named General John A. Logan had an idea very much like Welles'. He told people to decorate the graves of people every year on May 30. This day was called Decoration Day.

In 1882, the name "Decoration" Day was changed to "Memorial" Day. This day was to remember the dead from all wars, not just the Civil War.

In 1971, Memorial Day was declared a national holiday by President Nixon and the day was moved to the last Monday in May. Memorial Day is still a day on which we celebrate peace and remember those who have died in wars.

- Kundhavi Nandakumar