It’s Poppy Day.

When I was a child, we wore a red paper flower on a wire stem on Memorial Day. They were offered by Veterans of Foreign Wars to passersby for a donation to help veterans. The paper flowers symbolize the Remembrance Poppy from World War I.

Poppies became a veterans’ symbol thanks to the tireless efforts of Moina Michael, “The Poppy Lady,” who was inspired by the poem In Flanders Fields by John McCrae.  McCrae wrote the poem for a friend who died at the Second Battle of Ypres in Flanders (Belgium) in 1915.  After the battles, poppies bloomed among the graves.

At first her idea did not catch on, but in 1922 the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) adopted the poppy as their official memorial flower.  That year they distributed paper poppies made in France but in 1924 they brought the program stateside to the first Buddy Poppy factory, located in Pittsburgh and manned by disabled veterans.

Ninety years later the Buddy Poppies are still assembled by disabled and needy veterans at VA Hospitals across the country and Buddy Poppy fund drives focus on Memorial and Veterans Days.   (Watch a video about the VFW Buddy Poppy program here.)

That’s why I think of poppies today.

(photo from Lest We Forget via Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)

p.s. Did you know that growing poppies used to be illegal in the U.S.?  The Opium Poppy Control Act of 1942 was repealed in October 1970 but the law remains ambiguous.