Memorial Day

I don’t remember when children began selling artificial poppies in memory of military men who died in World War I, but I am wondering If people remember how this began. Today on Memorial Day people put flowers on their own families graves. That is nice of course, but have you ever gone to the thousands of graves decorated with American flags at a military graveyard? I have, and to see all of the men and women who died there for all of us brought me to tears and prayer.

When I was a little girl I would sell poppies in honor and memory of the men who died during World War I. The date was somewhere in the thirties. Our school teacher handed out a bouquet of those artificial poppies and read to us the poem, “We Shall Keep The Faith”, by Moina Michael. She wrote this in 1918. I listened carefully to her as she read, and I thought about the men who died for me and all Americans. I decided if all of these poppies help to make us think of those men and use the money we earn to keep their memory alive, I must sell all of my poppies. I walked past a beer parlor the Saturday before Memorial Day and noticed there were many men in there. I thought I could sell nearly all of them there. So I went in. I sang all the songs I had learned in Sunday School and School and sold all of my poppies. I hurried home to tell Mama and Daddy What a good girl I was.

Imagine my surprise when Daddy scolded and spanked me! I was not to go into a beer parlor at all! I don’t remember if I knew I wasn’t supposed to go there, but I thought if all those men wore their poppy on Memorial Day they will make many people think of those men who died. And my story ends well anyhow. I got the prize for selling the most poppies. I think it was a candy bar.

I want to close my blog this week by writing ” We Shall Keep The Faith”, by Moina Michael:

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 luster 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 lessons that 
ye wrought. In Flanders Fields.

Moina Michael