37th Annual National Memorial Day Concert (Michael Colbert Productions, National Park Service, Lockheed Martin, PBS, aired May 24, 2026)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2026 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night (Sunday, May 24) I watched the 37th annual Memorial Day “Concert” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. featuring the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jack Everly – who’s been leading these productions since the founding conductor of the pops series of the National Symphony, Erich Kunzel, died in 2009. I used the quotes around the word “Concert” above because it’s less a concert and more a tribute to the heroism shown by various American servicemembers in the country’s wars. Most of the program consists of memoirs of actual servicemembers read aloud by actors, though some of the more recent authors are actually there “in the flesh” and are shown greeting the actors who read the memoirs they wrote. In previous years this format has occasionally become quite oppressive, but this year it seemed to blend together surprisingly well. The concert began with African-American country singer Mickey Guyton (and it’s a sign of our racial progress that “African-American country singer” is no longer a contradiction in terms: thank you, Charley Pride!) pouring her heart out into a spectacular rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” after which Andy Grammer lowered the emotional temperature a bit but still excelled in a song called “Don’t Give Up on Me,” which he co-wrote (with Bram Inscore, Jake Torrey, and Sam Farrar) and sang in 2019 for a romantic drama film called Five Feet Apart. Then actor Noah Wylie came out for the first dramatic recitation of the evening, a bit of a memoir by Revolutionary War soldier Joseph Plumb Martin read over the U.S. Army Fife and Bugle Corps (did anyone know the U.S. Army still had a Fife and Bugle Corps?) playing “Yankee Doodle” and other Revolutionary War-era songs. After Laura Osnes did an O.K. version of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” (the 1833 song in which American writers audaciously took over the national anthem of our enemy, Great Britain, and turned it into our own) the show abruptly shifted forwards several generations. The next memoir was by a Pearl Harbor survivor named Chuck Kohler, read by actor Jonathan Banks (who, though far younger than Kohler, looked old and crusty enough to be believable as a Pearl Harbor survivor). The most interesting aspect of Kohler’s tale was that Pearl Harbor happened on a seemingly bucolic Sunday morning during which he decided to take it easy and read inside an office in one of the Navy buildings in Hawai’i. Suddenly he felt fragments of glass hit him on the back of the neck, his first intimation that the base was under air attack from dive bombers launched from Japanese aircraft carriers. There was a touching moment after the recitation in which the real Chuck Kohler met the actor who’d just played him on stage.

Then there came another song by an artist who somehow has evaded my attention even though he had his first record in 2004: Jamey Johnson. Johnson was born July 14, 1975 in Enterprise, Alabama and was influenced by Alan Jackson, whom he says was the first singer he saw in concert. After graduating from Jefferson Davis High School (that name says it all!) Johnson attended Jacksonville State University for two years before he dropped out to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve for eight years. During his stint in the Marines he started playing country music, and in 2000 he settled in Nashville, Tennessee to make a serious run at country stardom. After hooking up with veteran violinist Greg Perkins, whose credentials included stints with Tammy Wynette and Tanya Tucker, Johnson landed a recording contract in 2005 with a small label called BNA Records. He recorded a single called “The Dollar” that made it to number 14 on Billboard’s country charts and led to a full-length album, also called The Dollar. But when his second single, “Rebelicious,” failed to chart, BNA dropped him. After a four-year period during which he divorced his wife and wrote songs for other artists, he put out an album of his own called That Lonesome Song. At first he only released it online, but it attracted the attention of executives at Mercury Nashville, which issued it commercially and put him under contract. The first song Johnson played last night, “In Color,” was from That Lonesome Song and was co-written by Johnson, James Otto, and Lee Thomas Miller. It’s told from the point of view of a young man looking at old photos of his family in black-and-white, and his older relatives are saying, “You should have seen it in color!” It got a stunning staging on the Memorial Day Concert telecast: for the first chorus the image was kept in black-and-white, but when the chorus ended the screen erupted into full color. After Johnson’s song there was a tribute to the victims of World War II and then a brief appearance by a man who was identified as the last surviving recipient of the Medal of Honor from the Korean War (though I didn’t catch his name and when I went to search online I found that the last Korean Medal of Honor winner Google lists, Ralph Puckett, Jr., died in 2024). Then there was a brief “Why I Serve” segment featuring Matthew Mays explaining why he enlisted and a tribute to Viet Nam War veterans hosted by Jim Miner and Eric Castvo (and don’t hold me to the spelling of Eric’s last name, since I got it off my carelessly and hastily scribbled notes).

The next actual song on the concert was “Lift Me Up” by Blessing Offor, a Nigerian-born Christian singer/songwriter whose parents emigrated to Connecticut when he was six to get treatment for his glaucoma. He was born blind in one eye and with limited sight in the other, and took up music in his teen years. Offor was a contestant on the series The Voice in 2014 and his best-known song is called “Brighter Days,” written for an album in 2022 to promote the careers of artists with disabilities. After another “Why I Serve” segment by Mauricio Hidalgo, the show cut to a Nashville performance by Alan Jackson, who played his song “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?,” a tribute to the survivors and victims of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the New York World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Thank goodness they programmed Jackson’s song, which asserts the power of love in the face of unspeakable evil, instead of the late Toby Keith’s bellicose “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American).” After that there was a tribute to a nurse who was working at the Pentagon that day, narrated by actress Melissa Leo. Then in honor of the 9/11 victims a woman played “Taps,” and I noticed she was playing it on a valved trumpet rather than a bugle (though I don’t recall seeing her actually use the valves). Then Jamey Johnson came back out on stage for another intensely emotional song, “Lead Me Home,” written by Randy Houser and Craig Monday for Johnson’s first album, The Dollar. Once again Johnson impressed me big-time; his voice has the same quiet intensity of Willie Nelson’s (with whom he’s collaborated), and YouTube features a live performance by Johnson at Nelson’s annual FarmAid concert in 2021 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rbW8rbpQ9I&list=RD3rbW8rbpQ9I&start_radio=1). After more “Why I Serve” testimonials, Jack Everly and the National Symphony played the traditional medley of the Armed Forces service songs: the Coast Guard’s “Semper Paratus,” the Space Force’s whatever-it-is (the Space Force is the rump branch of the U.S. military created by Donald Trump through executive order in his first term even though it’s the authority of Congress to create new service branches), the Air Force’s “Wild Blue Yonder,” the Navy’s “Anchors Away,” the Marines’ “Halls of Montezuma,” and the Army’s – well, its original title was “The Caisson Song” but it’s been decades since the Army actually used caissons (little wheeled trailers whose function was to transport artillery balls to the front), so the caissons have been omitted from the current lyric, much to my disappointment.

Following that there was an unwitting tribute to the success of current Defense Secretary (though he insists on being called “Secretary of War”) Pete Hegseth’s racist and sexist purge of the top ranks of the U.S. military. The seven members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were introduced – and they were all white men. When Hegseth took office after Donald Trump returned to the White House, he immediately fired the head of the Coast Guard because she was a woman and the chair of the Joint Chiefs because he was Black. By chance, Helene Cooper, military correspondent for The New York Times, had just appeared on the PBS news program Washington Week two days before and described Hegseth’s attitude towards women and people of color in the command and control structure of the U.S. military: “I remember one afternoon, these are the Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and I remember one afternoon standing at the end, because the press hallway, the old press hallway, was near there, and watching as each one Black officer after the other walked down that hallway, and I kept watching, each one pause when he got to Colin Powell. And there was like this moment where you stop, and you're like, oh, yes, and then you keep going. Because at that time, there had only been one Black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and it had been Colin Powell. And then Lloyd Austin came in. You had a Black Defense Secretary, and not soon after that, President Biden appointed C.Q. Brown as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and you had two Black men leading the military. And I remember a Black Marine saying to me, ‘This is never going to fly.’ And there was this belief that there's no way this military was ready to be led by, and it would've been the same way if you had been two women leading the military. It just wasn't ready for that. And I think what you're seeing in many ways with Pete Hegseth is sort of the embodiment of what – you know, what that Marine was afraid of.” The program introduced General Christopher J. Mahoney, current vice chair of the Joint Chiefs, who introduced the current chair, General Daniel Caine, for the brief obligatory speech on these occasions.

The program closed with Mickey Guyton singing “God Bless America,” and while these shows have a bit of the lumbering beast about them, this one I found unusually moving for the quality of the recitations as well as Jamey Johnson’s beautiful and heartfelt songs. One odd aspect to this program is that, for the second year in a row, Joe Mantegna bailed out on his usual co-hosting duties (with Gary Sinise) for health reasons. His explanation for missing the 2025 concert was an ear infection; this time he announced for the event and then cancelled at the last minute. His statement read, “I truly wish I could be there in person this year, but due to unforeseen circumstances, I need to remain in Los Angeles. I’m looking forward to joining the millions of Americans watching this Sunday’s concert on PBS and continuing to do everything I can to support this important event for years to come. The National Memorial Day Concert, and its mission of remembering those we’ve lost, honoring those who have served, and recognizing the sacrifices made by military families is something I will always hold close to my heart.” Instead Mary McCormick, an actress who became a particular favorite of mine after starring for four seasons (2008-2012) in a TV policier about the Witness Protection Program called In Plain Sight, stepped in as co-host with Sinise, and though she’s a bit more heavy-set than she was during the show’s run (but then think of how much I’ve changed physically in the last 15 years!), hers was a welcome presence and, of course, I wish the 78-year-old Mantegna all the best and hope to see him at the 2027 Memorial Day Concert.