Eastern Iowa will mark Memorial Day on Monday, May 25, with ceremonies, parades and flag placements that answer the holiday’s central question plainly: it is a day for honoring the nation’s dead military service members. In Cedar Rapids, Cedar Memorial will hold a tribute ceremony at 11 a.m. featuring patriotic music and a keynote address. Elsewhere, the day will bring a 10 a.m. Waterloo parade, a noon Dubuque County Memorial Day Parade and observances across the region.
One of the earliest efforts begins before the holiday. Honoring Our Veterans is looking for volunteers to place 8,000 American flags on the graves of veterans buried at Cedar Memorial on Saturday, May 23. Volunteers are asked to gather at 8 a.m. at the Family Center and Library, and the work is expected to take two to four hours. The flags will be removed at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, May 26.
The Cedar Memorial tribute is only one piece of a packed holiday schedule. The Metro Veterans Council will host a program inside the Veterans Memorial Building beginning at 10:30 a.m., with an opening prayer, live patriotic music, presentation of the Colors, a guest speaker, a volley salute and more. The Johnson County Military Affairs Association and the American Legion Post 17 and Auxiliary have also planned a series of ceremonies for the day.
On the other side of the state, the Iowa Department of Veterans Affairs will hold a ceremony at the Iowa Veteran’s Cemetery starting at 8 a.m. on Monday, with Col. Eric Soults as keynote speaker. Volunteers will set out flags there on May 22 at 9 a.m., weather permitting. The same agency will host another ceremony at Iowa Veterans Home at 10:30 a.m., where Lt. Col. Jodi Marti will speak. Both ceremonies will be broadcast statewide on the IDVA Facebook Page and later made available on the IDVA YouTube Channel.
For families looking for something more informal, the Iowa Gold Star Military Museum at Camp Dodge will offer a free military-style breakfast and live entertainment from 5 a.m. to noon. In Coralville, the American Legion will conduct Memorial Day services at two locations. In Waterloo, the parade will begin at 10 a.m. at the Waterloo Veterans Memorial. In Dubuque, the parade will start at noon, running from Greyhound Park Drive to Admiral Sheehy Drive before a ceremony at the Veterans Memorial Plaza.
The holiday’s meaning is built into the schedule itself. Ceremonies, flag placements, museum access and broadcasts all point to the same act of remembrance, but the clearest answer comes from the people preparing the flags before sunrise and gathering again in the morning to hear the names, prayers and salutes. Memorial Day is for honoring those who died in military service, and eastern Iowa will spend Monday doing exactly that.
