President Lyndon B. Johnson, signed a Presidential Proclamation recognizing Waterloo, New York as the Birthplace of Memorial Day. http://www1.va.gov/opa/speceven/memday/history.asp#hist http://www.waterloony.com/MemDay.html Following the end of the Civil War , many communities set aside a day to mark the end of the war or as a memorial to those who had died. Some of