Memorial Day is not Veterans Day. It’s an easy mix-up — for some of us raised outside of military families, we were never taught the difference. But the distinction matters, and on this particular Memorial Day, it matters to us more than usual.
Veterans Day (November 11) honors all who have served.
Memorial Day (the last Monday of May) honors those who didn’t come back.
It’s a day for the fallen. For the names on the stones. For the families who set an empty place at the table every year. The cookouts and long weekends are real, but the weight underneath them is too real — and Holland, Michigan has always understood that better than most.
What Memorial Day Looks Like in Holland
If you’ve lived here long enough, you know the rhythm. The flags go up along Eighth Street. The cemeteries get a fresh round of small American flags, planted at the base of every veteran’s headstone. The Memorial Day parade winds through downtown — color guards, scout troops, Gold Star families, the high school band. Brass and bagpipes. A few people watch silently from the curb. Others applaud as the colors go by.
If you’ve never been, this is the year. Bring kids. Bring grandparents. Stand for the colors. Take it in.
The Burden Many Veterans Carry Home
The thing about Memorial Day is that the men and women we’re honoring left behind brothers and sisters who did come home — often carrying injuries that never fully resolved.
The numbers are striking. According to U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs data:
- Back injuries are the most common service-connected disability in the VA system, affecting more than 1.3 million veterans.
- Musculoskeletal conditions — back, neck, knee, shoulder, hip — are the single largest category of VA disability claims, by a wide margin.
- The average veteran today carries close to seven distinct service-connected disability ratings.
These aren’t abstract numbers. These are the people we see in our office. The Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with chronic back pain from years of cumulative wear under body armor and combat gear. The retired Navy Combatant-Craft Crewman whose lumbar spine took thousands of wave-slamming impacts in a high-speed boat. The Army Airborne veterans with lumbar disc problems from hard parachute landings. The Marines with chronic mid-back pain from miles of marches under a full pack.
How Chiropractic Care Helps Veterans
Veterans are part of the reason chiropractic care has expanded its role inside the U.S. healthcare system over the past two decades. The VA formally integrated chiropractic care into its medical benefits in 2004 and has steadily grown it ever since — driven, in part, by the well-documented difficulty of managing chronic musculoskeletal pain with pharmaceuticals alone, and the cost of doing so. Chiropractic care offers veterans a non-opioid, conservative option for the kinds of injuries that follow them home.
In our office, the conditions we most often help veterans with are the predictable ones:
- Lumbar and cervical disc problems from years of carrying weight and impact-loading the spine
- Joint fixations and reduced range of motion in the lower back, shoulders, and neck — common after combat or hard-use deployments
- Headaches and post-concussive neck pain from blast exposure and impact
- Knee, hip, and ankle injuries that compensate up the chain into the spine
- Sciatica and radicular pain from compressed nerves at lumbar or cervical levels
We’re proud to care for the veterans in our community. Many of them have been patients of this office for decades — a few since the practice opened on West 17th Street in 1971. They deserve the door to be open, and the door is open. Always.
Three Ways to Honor the Fallen This Memorial Day
1. Show up to the parade.
The Holland Memorial Day parade steps off at 9:30 AM on Monday, May 25, 2026. It begins at 8th and Central, runs east along 8th Street, turns south down Lincoln Avenue, and finishes east along 16th Street at Pilgrim Home Cemetery. Full details on the Holland.org parade page.
I’ll be standing at the corner of Lincoln and 16th to watch the colors go by. If you’re there, come say hi.
Veterans see who stands. Gold Star families see who applauds. Standing for fifteen minutes on the curb costs you nothing and means more than you’d guess.
2. Walk Pilgrim Home Cemetery.
The parade ends at Pilgrim Home Cemetery (370 E 16th St), where the Holland VFW hosts a remembrance program at 11:00 AM with music, followed by breakfast, dinner, and cornhole on the cemetery grounds. The veteran headstones across the cemetery each get a fresh small American flag in the week leading up to the holiday. Walking a section of it with family — reading a few names and noting the years is one of the more grounding things you can do on this day.
3. Do the Murph.
For thirteen years now, I’ve spent Memorial Day morning at a CrossFit gym doing the workout known as “Murph.” For anyone unfamiliar — Murph is named after Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy, U.S. Navy SEAL, killed in action in Afghanistan on June 28, 2005, in Operation Red Wings (the operation depicted in Lone Survivor). He earned the Medal of Honor posthumously for breaking cover under heavy enemy fire to call in support for his team. He died trying to get help to his men.
The workout he favored — and which now bears his name — is one mile of running, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, and another mile of running. All of it done wearing a 20-pound vest if you have one. On Memorial Day, CrossFit gyms across the country host community Murph workouts to honor him and every fallen service member.
What hits me every year, somewhere in the middle of the second mile, is that I’m wearing 20 pounds. Twenty pounds, in shorts, on a clean spring morning in Holland, with water at the finish. Soldiers carry 60 to 100 pounds of pack and gear, for miles, with no idea when the next break or the next meal or the next firefight will come. Murph doesn’t make me a soldier. And I don’t pretend to be or mean to brag, but it makes me imagine — for one hour — a sliver of what a tired soldier carrying full pack feel like. That sliver is enough to keep me showing up the next year.
If you’ve never done Murph, you can scale it. Half-Murph (half the reps), partner Murph (split the work), or just walk the two miles with the vest. There’s no wrong way to participate. Come join me at CrossFit Lake Effect at 7 AM on Memorial Day — they’re hosting two community heats this year, at 7 AM and 8:30 AM. Open to anyone. Bring water.
For Our Office, This Memorial Day Is Personal
We lost the founder of our practice this May.
Staff Sgt. Barry McAlpine, DC — U.S. Army Cavalry, 1st of the 9th. Vietnam veteran. Founder of McAlpine Chiropractic Group, builder of the office our patients have walked into for 55 years. He came home from his service, built a practice in Holland that has now served three generations of patients, and spent decades giving back to the chiropractic profession and the community.
This Memorial Day, we remember the fallen as we always have. And we remember Barry, who came home, and who lived a life that the men he served alongside who didn’t come home would have been proud to call honored.
If you knew him, we’d love for you to come by this week. The door is open. So is the office’s history book — there’s always a story to share about him, and we’re collecting them.
A Quiet Invitation, Not an Ask
This isn’t a post that ends with “book an appointment.” That’s not what Memorial Day is for.
But if you’re a veteran in West Michigan — or you love one — and chronic pain from your time in service is something you’ve been carrying alone, you’re welcome here whenever you’re ready. We’d be honored to help.
For everyone else: stand for the colors on Monday. Place a flag if you can. When you’re in the office this week, pick one up (we have about 500 of them to hand out). And if you find yourself near a Holland-area CrossFit gym Memorial Day morning, look for the tired people in the 20-pound vests. That’s us, remembering.
McAlpine Chiropractic Group
500 West 17th Street, Holland, MI 49423
616-392-7031 · Book online through Jane App
References:
– U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Veterans Benefits Administration Annual Benefits Report, Fiscal Year 2024 — musculoskeletal conditions, including back and joint injuries, are the largest single category of service-connected VA disabilities. https://benefits.va.gov/REPORTS/abr/
– Lisi AJ, Brandt CA. Trends in the use and characteristics of chiropractic services in the Department of Veterans Affairs. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics. 2016;39(5):381-386. doi:10.1016/j.jmpt.2016.05.001
– Michael P. Murphy Medal of Honor citation, U.S. Navy. https://www.navy.mil/Resources/Hall-of-Honor/
