Learn About Veterans Day at Grayslake Heritage Center and Museum

—Submitted by the Grayslake Historical Society

Veterans Day will be observed on Monday, Nov. 11 throughout the country, and the Grayslake Heritage Center and Museum, 164 Hawley St., has several artifacts and written materials for remembering those men and women who served their country.

Veterans Day is not to be confused with Memorial Day. Veterans Day celebrates the service of all U.S. military veterans, while Memorial Day is a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving.

The museum has several military related items on display. There are also several written and recorded items that are available to the public in the archives of the museum in the basement. An attendant must be present for review of the items in the archives.

"Absent But Ever Present," a book written by Grayslake Historical Society President Charlotte Renehan, is a compilation of people buried in the Grayslake Cemetery on Lake Street near the intersection of Route 120. The book is available for reading and/or research in the museum's archives.

Laid to rest in that cemetery, most of them Grayslake area residents, are 15 Civil War veterans, six World War I veterans, two War of 1812 veterans and one veteran of the Spanish American War.

Also available to the public to read and listen to in the archives are more than 50 taped and written oral histories from Grayslake veterans from World War I and  World War II.

A display case in the archives pays tribute to Grayslake veterans. Included are pictures, military artifacts and a Grayslake American Legion Post decorative lighted globe that was used for officer installation ceremonies.

The Legion post was founded in 1920 and was named the James Catalano Post after Grayslake's only casualty during World War I. The name was changed to Grayslake Post 659 in 1945.

Veterans Day was first proclaimed as Armistice Day by President Woodrow Wilson on Nov. 11, 1919. Major hostilities for World War I were formally ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, when the armistice with Germany went into effect.

On May 13, 1938, Congress established Nov. 11 a legal holiday and "a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as Armistice Day."

Beginning in 1945, World War II veteran Raymond Weeks of Alabama began a campaign to expand Armistice Day to celebrate all veterans, not just those who died in World War I. In 1954, Congress approved legislation replacing "Armistice" with "Veterans." President Dwight Eisenhower signed the legislation.

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan honored Weeks at the White House with the Presidential Citizenship Medal as the force behind the national holiday. Reagan said Weeks was the "Father of Veterans Day."

Hours at the museum are noon to 4 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and during the Farmers Market on Saturday mornings and during other downtown Grayslake events.