DECORATION DAY

Nina and Charlie Portfors

In the 1930s, my grandparents, Charlie and Nina Portfors, began a Memorial Day tradition of visiting the Burnt Ridge Cemetery near Troy, Idaho, because Grandma’s mother and grandparents were buried there. In those days, Memorial Day, also called “Decoration Day,” was celebrated on the designated date, May 31^st, regardless of where it fell in the week. Dressed in their Sunday best and with cut flowers from their garden in the trunk, Grandma and Grandpa drove the 50 miles or so to Troy.

The Burnt Ridge Cemetery was probably the only one my grandparents visited, but life never stays the same. In 1945, my mother’s husband, Fairly Walrath, was killed in an accident, and he was buried at the Normal Hill Cemetery in Lewiston, 45 miles from Orofino. Mother said she chose Normal Hill because it had such good care. At that time, Grandpa Portfors purchased the adjacent plot for himself and Grandma.

Then in May 1955, Grandma Portfors died suddenly, and she was buried in the Normal Hill plot sooner than anyone expected, especially Grandpa. Now it was important to him to visit the Normal Hill Cemetery as well as to honor Grandma’s tradition of visiting the Burnt Ridge Cemetery.

So, my mother stepped in and took over the organization of Memorial Day cemetery visitations. It was challenging because it was more than could be easily done in one day. We had to have enough flowers for all the graves, and we had to plan for meals. (The living need to eat.)

Whether Mother visited cemeteries on Memorial Day prior to Grandma’s passing I don’t know, but she embraced the tradition at that point. I loved it! In the early years, we picked flowers from the yard and put them in washtubs and buckets in the trunk of Grandpa Portfors’ Lincoln. We had lilacs, iris, coral bells, narcissus, peonies, roses, hawthorn, and occasionally a tulip or two. At the cemetery, we made individual bouquets and put them in 64-ounce “Hi-C” juice cans saved by sister Joni. (Remember when juice came in cans?)

The passing years brought challenges to this activity. I grew up and could no longer help. Juice no longer came in cans. There were more graves, more cemeteries, and fewer flowers. Mother wasn’t interested in artificial flowers – just not her idea of life – so she began to plant boxes. We had some metal ones, and my dad built some wooden ones for her. She placed the boxes on Memorial Day, and then ideally, someone picked them up so that they could be re-used the next year. 

What began as a simple activity of remembrance morphed into work and expense. But -- it was still a labor of love. KW