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Memorial Day: Where you can watch a virtual parade, how to visit a grave site online

We’re just days away from the first major travel holiday post-coronavirus lockdown and Florida and Georgia are in full phase one of reopening.

This Memorial Day comes during a time where mass social gatherings are discouraged. The day honors the lives of men and women who have given their life in the fight for our freedom.

Instead of gathering at national veteran cemeteries and attending parades, The Wounded Warrior Project is teaming up with ancestry.com to put on a virtual parade. It give veterans who want to pay respects a chance to honor their brothers and sisters who died in service.

The virtual parade starts at 11 a.m. on Monday. You can watch it live on Memorial Day by clicking here. To visit the grave site of your loved one without leaving your home, click here.

You are also encouraged to submit photos discovered using Ancestry’s free access to military records, in memory of loved ones lost. With the largest collection of U.S. military records for family history research, Ancestry is providing new ways for people to connect to the history of World War II by finding the veterans in their family tree who served our nation, and those who lived through this remarkable chapter in history. Ancestry is opening free access to:

  • More than 550 million military records on Fold3®, covering military conflicts as early as the Revolutionary War, open May 21-25
  • Nearly 500 million records and images from the National Archives and Records Administration available on Ancestry, including all 36 million of the nation’s available World War II young man’s draft cards, open now through June 1.