Mayor Volk and Loretta Feist

Members of the Dan R. Richardson American Legion Auxiliary Post 54 of Linton will hold their annual “Poppy Day” on Friday, May 23, and members will be selling poppies throughout the day.

The Legion Auxiliary encourages everyone to wear a poppy in support of our veterans, as well as troops currently serving our country overseas.

The Memorial Poppy

The Poppy as the memorial flower for American war dead is a tradition which began in the years following World War I. Veterans returning to their homes in this country remembered the wild poppies which lined the devastated battlefields of France and Belgium, and the soldiers of all nations came to look upon this flower as a living symbol of their dead comrades’ sacrifice.

Col. John McCrae, a Canadian officer who was killed during the war, immortalized the flower in his famous poem entitled “In Flanders’ Fields.” Flanders was a major battlefield in Belgium during World War I, and the poem reads like this:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place, and 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 your quarrel with the foe

To you from falling hands we throw

The torch be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Returning servicemen brought with them memories of the battlefield poppies, and the flower soon took on a sacred significance. The poppy soon became a symbol of honoring the dead and assisting the living victims of war.

Soon after the armistice (Nov. 11, 1918), patriotic organizations in different countries began conducting Poppy sales for the benefit of children in France and Belgium who were victims in the war. Later, the flowers, which were made by disabled servicemen, raised funds for relief work among handicapped veterans and their families. Wearing a poppy came to mean honor the dead and help the living.

The homecoming of the 32nd Division in Milwaukee in June, 1919, marked the beginning of the Auxiliary’s Poppy program. A coffee and doughnut booth decorated with paper poppies was stripped in its floral ornaments twice and the passersby who took the poppies, left contributions on the counter.

Several hundred dollars were contributed for the benefit of disabled veterans. One of the women in the booth, Mary Hanecy, proposed that distributing poppies on the streets around the time of Memorial Day would be an excellent way for American Legion Posts to raise money needed for rehabilitation work. She presented her idea to Post No. 1 in Milwaukee and as a result, this group conducted a Poppy distribution on the Saturday before Memorial Day in 1920.

The Georgia Department of the American Legion adopted the Poppy as a memorial flower at its convention in 1920. The Georgia delegation then took the idea to the American Legion National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in September, 1920.

There, the Poppy was adopted as the national memorial flower of the organization. At the first National Convention of the American Legion Auxiliary, held October, 1921, in Kansas City, Missouri., one of the organization’s first actions was the adoption of the Poppy as its memorial flower.

During the same period, the Poppy also became the memorial flower of the British Legion. Other American veterans’ organizations followed the American Legion and Auxiliary in adopting the Poppy as their official flower of remembrance. Shortly afterward, millions of the memorial flowers were worn each year throughout the English-speaking world to honor the war dead and aid living and disabled veterans.

By 1924, it was realized the Poppy program would be best handled by women, so the American Legion gave the Legion Auxiliary complete charge of the national program. The Legion Auxiliary has lived up to the great responsibilities of the program.

At present time, approximately 25 million Americans wear Legion and Auxiliary Poppies in tribute to the war dead, contributing nearly $2 million dollars for the rehabilitation and well-being of disabled veterans.