It’s time once again to mark your calendar: the annual 2024 opportunity to wear a poppy showing your support for our country’s veterans is fast approaching! National Poppy Day is the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, May 24, however, poppies will be available at many local businesses and Lanesboro’s American Legion Post #40 from midweek through the holiday on May 27.
Despite popular opinion, poppies are not for sale. In exchange for your poppy, a donation is not required. However, any and all donations are welcome and greatly appreciated. Poppy money donations are used only to support veterans in need. For example, in past years $5 bought socks for hospitalized veterans, $10 has provided transportation for a veteran to the VA hospital. $25 has bought a veteran clothing for a job interview. $50 has provided a holiday dinner for a veteran’s family.
Last year’s Poppy Appeal at Lanesboro’s American Legion resulted in a total of over $1000. None of that money can be used to pay for any of the Poppy Appeal expenses. Instead, the project chosen to receive all of that money was added to the fund for the purchase of a new van used by the County’s Veteran Services office to transport veterans, free of charge, to their appointments at the Veterans Hospital in Minneapolis.
The poppy tradition has a long history. Lt. Col. John McCrae was a Canadian medical doctor who in World War I was treating the wounded in Ypres, Belgium. When a long-time young friend was killed on the battlefield, it provided grim inspiration for McCrae to write this poem. He and his fellow soldiers had been struck by the bright red poppies in the otherwise desolated landscape; it seemed as if they thrived amidst the chaos. In the poppies they had seen hope.
It is said that the poem was so successful because “it connects the reader with the wishes of the once-living, so they may rest in peace in Flanders Field.” But it also contains a warning: by not continuing the fight, the dead will have paid the ultimate price for nothing and will never be at peace. This point is brought into focus by the endless rows of crosses that mark the graves of those who lost their lives, and most profoundly by the poppies that blow around them.”
This is the poem that has been so inspiring for so many years:
In Flanders Fields the
poppies blow
Between the crosses, row
on row,
That mark our place; and
in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the
guns below.
We are the Dead. Short
days ago
We lived, felt dawn, Saw
sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with
the foe:
To you from failing hands
we throw
The torch; be yours to hold
it high.
If ye break the faith with
us who die
We shall not sleep, though
poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.
In 1918, before the end of World War I, Moina Belle Michael was at work in New York City. A young soldier had placed a copy of the November Ladies Home Journal on her desk. On her break, she opened it to a marked page. There she saw Colonel McCrae’s poem, then titled “We Shall Not Sleep.” Even though she had seen the poem before, this time it “transfixed me… as though the silent voices again were vocal, whispering, in sighs of anxiety until anguish.”
That experience caused her to pledge to “keep the faith.” She vowed always to wear a red poppy. It would be a sign of remembrance, the emblem of “keeping the faith with all who died.’” She showed Colonel McCrae’s poem to others, and started buying red poppies to give away. She quickly became known as The Poppy Lady.
In November 1918, she wrote the poem “We Shall Keep the Faith,” as her response to “In Flanders Fields”:
Oh! You who sleep in
Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet—to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw and holding high, we keep the faith with all who died.
We cherish, too, the poppy red that grows on fields where
valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies that blood of heroes never dies, but lends a lustre to the red of the flower that blooms above the dead, In Flanders Fields.
And now the Torch and Poppy Red we wear in honor
of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught; we’ll teach the
lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.
Wearing a poppy is a powerful message of support. Thank you for wearing yours. And, never forget what our country’s veterans have done – and continue to do – for us.