Second Monday in August wrote:
Rhode Island has apparently been on its own since the late 1960s or ’70s, when Arkansas dropped its version of Victory Day — known there as “World War II Memorial Day” — and reportedly gave state workers their birthdays off as a consolation. "The tenacity of Rhode Island in celebrating Aug. 14 (now second Monday in August) deserves special attention for its interplay of state, local, national, and even international politics.”
https://www.wpri.com/news/politics/heres-why-ri-is-the-only-state-that-celebrates-victory-day/
Well, WWII impacted the state in a lot of ways:
"About 92,000 Rhode Island residents served in the war – more than one in ten – and almost 2,200 of them were killed, according to Dr. Patrick Conley, the state’s historian laureate.
The Navy had a huge presence in Rhode Island during World War II, and three future presidents — John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush — all did some of their training in the state. “During World War II, Rhode Island was an armed camp,” Christian McBurney and Brian Wallin argue in a recent book about the state during the war.
The local manufacturing industry also went into overdrive, supplying everything from ships and blankets to medals." - from the article.
We [RI] may be small in size, but we [RI] are full of pride.
