On Monday morning, while the rest of the Grand Strand wakes up to traffic, sunscreen, and the rumble of motorcycles, a small group will gather at the North Myrtle Beach Park and Sports Complex to do what Memorial Day actually asks of us: remember.
A Holiday With Two Meanings
For most of the half-million people moving through the Grand Strand this weekend, Memorial Day means the beach is finally open and summer has arrived. The City of North Myrtle Beach reports its permanent population of roughly 22,000 residents swells past 100,000 daily during peak visitor season, and that surge begins Memorial Day weekend [City of North Myrtle Beach, 2026].
But Memorial Day was never built to mean barbecue. It was built to mean memory.
At 11:00 a.m. Monday, May 25, North Myrtle Beach will hold its annual Memorial Day Service at the Veterans Memorial inside the North Myrtle Beach Park and Sports Complex at 150 Citizens Circle [Tourism Works for the Grand Strand, 2026]. It’s a ceremony most visitors won’t see. Most won’t even know it’s happening. And that’s part of what makes it worth writing about.
What the Ceremony Actually Is
The Veterans Memorial at the Park and Sports Complex is one of the quiet jewels of the city — a permanent installation built specifically to honor those who served, and the focal point of the city’s annual Memorial Day and Veterans Day observances [WMBF News, 2024].
The service is small by design. No parades. No floats. No commercial sponsors. Visitors stand in the morning sun, removing hats, and listen as names are read, prayers are offered, and the bugle plays “Taps.” It is the kind of event that doesn’t translate to social media — and isn’t supposed to. For families whose loved ones never came home, that’s the entire point.
The Names Behind the Names
What gets lost in broader weekend coverage is that North Myrtle Beach has its own list of losses. In August 2025, the city dedicated a new First Responders Memorial at the Park and Sports Complex following the line-of-duty death of Sergeant Gordon Best, who was killed in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day 2021 [WPDE, 2025].
North Myrtle Beach Police Chief Dana Crowell spoke at that dedication, explaining the department spent more than four years working to create what she called a “sacred space” where Sergeant Best and others who fall in the line of duty would be permanently remembered [WPDE, 2025]. The Veterans Memorial and the First Responders Memorial honor different forms of service, but they share the same idea — that a community owes its memory to the people who gave their lives in service to it.
A Region Shaped by Military Service
North Myrtle Beach doesn’t observe Memorial Day in isolation. The Myrtle Beach Air Force Base operated from World War II until 1993 and at one point accounted for 25 percent of Horry County’s entire payroll [City of Myrtle Beach, 2026]. The base’s footprint is now The Market Common, and Warbird Park there will host the City of Myrtle Beach’s annual Memorial Day Remembrance Ceremony at 11 a.m. Monday — this year also serving as the grand opening of a new Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, with Medal of Honor recipient Maj. Gen. James E. Livingston, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.) as the featured speaker [City of Myrtle Beach, 2026; WPDE, 2026].
Surfside Beach will hold a Golf Cart Parade at 11 a.m. followed by a Memorial Day Ceremony at 2 p.m., and Conway will host a Memorial Day Tribute at 2 p.m. at McCown Auditorium [Tourism Works for the Grand Strand, 2026]. In Little River, a long-planned Veterans, First Responders & Patriots 9/11 Memorial is moving forward thanks to the Space Air Land Sea HQ Veterans Post 1 and community donations [North Myrtle Beach Times, 2026]. The Grand Strand is, and has always been, a deeply military community.
Why the Quiet Ceremonies Matter Most
There’s a temptation every Memorial Day to make the holiday bigger — to add fireworks and concerts and fold it into a tourism push. North Myrtle Beach has mostly resisted. The Veterans Memorial service Monday will look much like it did last year. A flag. A few rows of chairs. Officials in dress uniform. Family members holding photographs. A wreath. A prayer. “Taps.”
That restraint is the point. Memorial Day isn’t a celebration. It’s a remembrance — and remembrance requires stillness in a way that loud weekends rarely provide.
For Gold Star families across Horry County, who will spend Monday morning visiting graves or sitting in living rooms with photographs they no longer need to dust, the existence of these ceremonies matters even when they can’t attend. Knowing that somewhere in their community a small group of people is standing at attention and reading names out loud — that’s the contract.
How to Show Up
If you live in North Myrtle Beach and have never attended this ceremony, this is the year to go.
Where: Veterans Memorial, North Myrtle Beach Park and Sports Complex, 150 Citizens Circle When: 11:00 a.m., Monday, May 25, 2026 [Tourism Works for the Grand Strand, 2026]
You don’t need to be a veteran. You don’t need to have lost someone. You don’t need to dress up. You just need to show up — because the smallest meaningful thing a community can do for the people who never came home is to remember they were here.
The beach will still be there at noon. The grill will still be hot at two. The traffic on Highway 17 will still be slow at five.
Eleven o’clock is for memory.
Further Reading
- Memorial Day Ceremonies Across the Grand Strand — Tourism Works for the Grand Strand (May 2026): tourismworksforthegrandstrand.com
- Myrtle Beach Memorial Day & Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Grand Opening — City of Myrtle Beach (May 2026): cityofmyrtlebeach.com
- First Responders Memorial Dedication — WPDE (August 2025): wpde.com
- 9/11 Memorial Planned for Little River — North Myrtle Beach Times (May 2026): nmbtimes.com
- Military Appreciation Days Schedule — City of Myrtle Beach: cityofmyrtlebeach.com
