The real meaning of Memorial Day isn't just about the military — it's about forgiveness.

In the years following the bitter Civil War, a former Union general took a holiday originated by former Confederates and helped spread it across the entire country.

The holiday was Memorial Day, and the 2018 commemoration on May 28 marks the 150th anniversary of its official nationwide observance. The annual commemoration was born in the former Confederate States in 1866 and adopted by the United States in 1868. It is a holiday in which the nation honors its military dead.

Gen. John A. Logan, who headed the largest Union veterans fraternity at that time, the Grand Army of the Republic, is usually credited as being the originator of the holiday.

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This free camp is helping military kids who've paid the highest price learn to be kids.

For years, 9-year-old Miriam Gaston watched her dad Shafer leave home for months at a time to serve as an officer on a submarine.

Last July, she left home for the first time herself. She was going to summer camp.

"It was sort of scary because it was my first sleepaway thing for over 24 hours, and so I was sort of freaking out," she explains.

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Read the surprising, hilarious, blunt, yet sweet letters kids write to the military.

“Imagine that you worked in an office building, and you couldn’t leave it for weeks at a time.”

Ensign Christine Conlon says, "That’s what it feels like to be deployed on a Navy ship."

The USS Ross in port at Souda Bay, Greece. Photo by Spc. 1st Class Theron J. Godbold/Released/U.S. Navy.

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