Fall 2003 Traditional Memorial Spontaneous Memorial

According to The New Oxford Dictionary of English, a memorial is “something, especially a structure, established to remind people of a pers n or event”. 1 The past is not “Preserved ” but is “Socially Constructed ” through archives, museums, monuments, school curricula, and public displays. 2 What happens in the past is continuously being reconstructed in the context of the present. Every one of us encounters certain “markers ” of the past that help us remember and give meaning to our lives. Graves, cemeteries, monuments, and religious places of worship are all examples of such “markers”. “A memorial may be a day, a conference, or a space, but it need not be a monument. A monument, on the other hand, is always a kind of memorial”. 3 Memorials focus on certain people or events and the place that a memorial is constructed is just as important as the people or events themselves. Memorials become landmarks that provide a symbolic place for remembrance. If a memorial is placed at the town’s center, the importance of its memory becomes very clear. We are all aware of what a memorial is. In writing this paper, however, w