By William “Skip” Deegans
Older readers may remember the nearly lost custom of wearing red poppies on Memorial Day to honor servicemen and women who died in wars. The custom has its origins in a poem, In Flanders Field, that was written by Canadian brigade surgeon Lt. Col. John McCrae in 1915. He was moved by the poppies that blanketed Flanders Field in Belgium after 87,000 allied soldiers were killed there in World War I. The poem was initially published in London’s Punch magazine and later republished in other publications.
In 1918, Moina Belle Michael was on duty at the YMCA Overseas War Secretaries’ headquarters in New York when a young soldier left on her desk a copy of the latest issue of Ladies Home Journal that included McCrae’s poem. She was inspired by the poem, and at the same time three men who were attending a conference at the YMCA gave her a $10 donation in appreciation of her brightening up the reading room with flowers at her own expense. She used the donation to buy artificial poppies at a department store. She kept one and gave the rest to delegates at the conference. Upon her return to her native Georgia in 1919, she taught a class of disabled veterans at the University of Georgia when she got the idea of making and selling poppies to help veterans.
By 1920, the National American Legion recognized the poppy as the U.S. national emblem of remembrance. They started the Buddy Poppy program and volunteers handed out red poppies in exchange for donations to help veterans and their families. In 1924, disabled ex-servicemen began making poppies at the Buddy Poppy factory in Pittsburg.
A similar program undertaken by Madam Anna Guerin of France used the proceeds of selling poppies made of fabric to raise funds to help rebuild regions of France that were devastated during World War I.
Memorial Day was initially called Decoration Day that may have originated after the Civil War when African Americans remembered the Union soldiers who died in a Confederate prison camp in Charleston, South Carolina. The official Decoration Day was in 1868 at Arlington National Cemetery. In other countries fallen veterans are honored on Remembrance Day on November 11, the anniversary of the 1918 armistice.
Sources: National WWI Museum, Royal Canadian Legion, Royal British Legion, Good Housekeeping.
