Saturday, May 8, 2004, has been proclaimed Kimball Poppy Day. The poppy will be offered to the public Friday evening, May 7, and Saturday morning, May 8, in Kimball to honor the men and women who gave their lives to keep the rest of us people free. Please wear the little “Red poppy” in memory of our fallen heroes. Thank you, Anita Hoefer, Poppy Chairperson Please read on to learn the story about our “little red flower, the poppy.” THE POPPY LADY The time: Nov. 9, 1918 – the Saturday before Armistice. The place: New York City YMCA, War Secretaries’ Headquarters A young soldier walked into the “hostess house” of the YMCA and laid a copy of a recent Ladies Home Journal on the desk of staff member Moina Michael. This simple gesture started a significant chain of events. It wasn’t until she had completed her desk work that Moina found time to pick up the magazine left on her desk and turn to the page the soldier had specifically marked. It featured an illustrated reprint of John McCrae’s poignant poem We Shall Not Sleep (later renamed In Flanders Fields) in which the dead of World War I speak to the living. She read and re-read the words and was especially moved by the last stanza: “To you from failing 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.” Moina later related what passed through her mind as she read the poem, particularly that last stanza. “This was for me a full spiritual experience. It seemed as though the now-silenced voices again were vocal, whispering, in sighs of anxiety unto anguish. Alone, in a high moment of resolve, I pledged to keep the faith and always wear a red poppy of Flanders Fields as a sign of remembrance and the emblem of keeping the faith with all who died.” Having made mental resolution, Michael then began to scribble her pledge on the back of a used envelope, resulting in her poem, We Shall Keep the Faith, which began with the following: “Oh! You who sleep in Flanders Fields. Sleep sweet – to arise anew. We caught the torch you threw. And, holding high, we keep the faith with all who died.” The three-stanza poem ended: “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.” As she completed her poem, a committee from the 25th Conference of the YMCA War Secretaries came to her desk and gave her a check for $10 as a token of appreciation for her efforts in keeping the hostess rooms so home-like. Moina had been in the habit of arranging flowers about the rooms, using her own money to buy the needed flowers. She could have used the check herself but instead she decided to buy red poppies. Word of Moina’s “poppy idea” quickly spread. Response to her idea was most enthusiastic, but no one had any poppies. Moina spent the whole afternoon scouring New York City for artificial red poppies. She returned with all there were to be found: one large silk red poppy and about two dozen small ones. These were distributed to YMCA workers. This was the first occasion of the wearing of red remembrance poppies, symbolic of the valiant flower that grew in the battlefields of France and elsewhere on the Western Front of World War I. Moina returned to her home state of Georgia in February. She continued to wear the red poppy and made more for others to wear. She soon became known as the “poppy lady.” The first sale of red poppies to the public was by the Boy Scouts of America at Carnegie Hall in New York on Feb. 14, 1919. Canadian ace Col. W.A. Bishop gave a talk there on air fighting in Flanders Fields. In June of the same year, a booth serving coffee and doughnuts to the returning men of the 32nd (Red Arrow) Division in Milwaukee was brightly decorated with red poppies. People passing the booth picked the flowers at random and left donations. The American Legion’s George F. Plant Post #1 of Milwaukee had previously distributed poppies, and on the Saturday before Memorial Day in 1920, members distributed 50,000 flowers. An impressive $5,500 was raised for charity. Moina Michael’s idea was really beginning to “blossom.” But the poppy lady was not about to sit back and consider her work completed. She had been busy on her own in Georgia and was able to interest the American Legion members there to wear the flower in remembrance of their fallen buddies. During August 1920, the Georgia Department of the American Legion adopted the poppy as its memorial flower. The red poppy was adopted as the national memorial flower of the American Legion at it’s national convention in Cleveland in September 1920. The Legion Auxiliary followed suit in October 1920, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars did likewise in 1921. From America, the idea spread to England and then to other foreign countries. As in the United States, the little red flowers were made by the maimed, gassed and wounded men of World War I who had no other sources of income. Moina Michael faithfully kept her pledge to wear the red poppy to remember and honor the fallen-dead until her death in 1944 at 74 years old. At her burial, the grave was tenderly covered with a huge blanket of special flowers: 3,223 red poppies which had been made by war veterans. It was their final tribute of love and appreciation to Moina Michael, the “poppy lady.”
