Silver Star Service Banner Day

The silver star banner tradition dates to 1917 and 1918, when the Women's Committee of the Council of National Defense suggested that families of wounded service members display a blue star banner overlaid with silver threads. The practice faded between the world wars, even as the blue and gold star banners endured, leaving the wounded without their own recognized symbol.

That changed in 2004, when Steve and Diana Newton founded the Silver Star Families of America to revive the banner and win it official recognition. Their petitioning worked: on April 21, 2010, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H. Res. 855 supporting the designation of May 1 as Silver Star Service Banner Day, and the Senate followed with its own resolution that May. All fifty states, along with territories and thousands of cities and counties, have since issued proclamations, and Missouri wrote the day into state law.

The banner is not the Silver Star Medal, and that distinction matters. It belongs to families, hung in windows to say: someone in this home was wounded or fell seriously ill in service to the country. Its earners include those whose injuries surfaced months or decades after they came home, because some wounds, of body or mind, take years to declare themselves.

On May 1, the observance is quiet by design: moments of silence, wreath layings, banners in windows, and visits to VA hospitals. If you know a wounded veteran, thank them. If you see a silver banner, understand what it cost. Remembrance is the least a nation can offer, and on this day, it is the whole point.