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This Week · Remembrance · Memorial

Remembrance: why do we remember people we never met?

For littler ones: How do we remember someone we never got to meet?

Remembrance — Why do we remember people we never met?

This week we're wondering about remembrance — about holding on to people we never knew. Why do we remember someone whose voice we never heard, whose name we may not even know? It's a quiet thing to turn over in the car or at the table, and a fitting one with Memorial Day at the end of the week, when a lot of families set aside a day to do exactly that.

This week's stories

American

The First Decoration Day

The story behind the holiday — freed Black residents of Charleston, people who had just come out of slavery, gathering to lay flowers on the graves of Union soldiers they had never met, and how that day became the Memorial Day we keep now.

American

Casey Jones

A real railroad engineer who stayed at his post and held the brake to slow a runaway train, so that the people behind him would get home — and who didn't get home himself.

Talk about it

  • Is there someone in our family, or in a story, that you remember even though you never met them? How did you come to know about them?
  • The families on the first Decoration Day brought flowers to people they'd never met. Why do you think they did that?
  • Casey Jones stayed at the brake instead of jumping clear. What do you make of that — and what would you want someone to remember about you?

A new question every week.

Listen together in the app — short audio stories for kids 4–10, at bedtime, on the drive, in the drop-off line.

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