Poppy sales planned for Memorial Day

Posted 5/19/21

AMBOY — The Amboy American Legion Auxiliary will be offering Poppies for donations Friday, May 28 and Saturday, May 29.

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Poppy sales planned for Memorial Day

Posted

AMBOY — The Amboy American Legion Auxiliary will be offering Poppies for donations Friday, May 28 and Saturday, May 29.

Millions of American Legion Auxiliary poppies are distributed annually by ALA units, raising money for veterans, active-duty servicemembers, and their families. 

You can donation for a Poppy at the following Amboy locations: Amboy Food and Liquor, Casey’s, Shell, Dollar Store, Amboy Family Restaurant, The First National Bank in Amboy, Maria’s and Sunset. In Sublette, you can donate for a Poppy at Country Village Meats, Bonnell’s General Store, Sublette BP, and Local Cup and Cake. Please help support our local American Legion Auxiliary by stopping by any of these local merchants and give a donation for a poppy on Friday, May 28, and Saturday, May 29.

Meeting the continuing needs of veterans should be the concern of every American who values his or her freedom. The Auxiliary promotes the poppy as a symbol of the sacrifices the military have made, a symbol to open people’s hearts and inspire them to donate.

Poppy Day is celebrated in countries around the world. The American Legion brought National Poppy Day® to the United States by asking Congress to designate the Friday before Memorial Day, as National Poppy Day.

The red poppy flower associated with Memorial Day is a truly meaningful symbol. These beautiful flowers are worn in commemoration of those brave soldiers who lost their lives defending our country’s freedom and protecting the lives of those who could not protect themselves.   

  After World War I, poppies began to spread all across Europe. It is believed that the soils across the continent had been enriched with lime as a result of all the debris left after the war. From this rubble emerged red poppies, which would come to symbolize the bloodshed of the battlefields.

The notion of tying in poppies with the lives lost in the war first began with Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, who wrote a solemn poem in honor of the troops who had died in service. The poem resonated with Moina Michael, a professor at the University of Georgia, who decided to make and sell red silk poppies to raise money in order to help returning veterans. She would continue to lobby for the red poppy to become a symbol of commemoration until it became the U.S. national emblem of remembrance in 1920.

Poppies are worn in the United States on National Poppy Day, which falls on the Friday before Memorial Day. 

In Flanders Fields

“In Flanders Fields” is a war poem in the form of a rondeau, written during the First World War by Canadian physician and Lt. Col. John McCrae. He was inspired to write it on May 3, 1915, after presiding over the funeral of friend and fellow soldier Alexis Helmer, who died during the Second Battle of Ypres.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place; and in 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 our quarrel with the foe:

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.

–Lt. Col. John McCrae