Memorial Day Poppy

The idea for the Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy came to Ms. Moina Michael after she saw a vivid color illustration for the poem "We Shall Not Sleep" (later named "In Flanders Fields") by Canadian Army Lt. Col. John McCrae, M.D.

Reading the poem on this occasion--she had read it many times before--Moina was transfixed by the last verse: "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."

“In Flanders Fields” appeared in the November 1918 “Ladies Home Journal” and after reading it Moina Michael made a personal pledge to 'keep the faith' and vowed always to wear a red poppy of Flanders Fields as a sign of remembrance and as an emblem for “keeping the faith with all who died.”

Compelled to make a note of this pledge she hastily scribbled down a response on the back of a used envelope, entitled "We Shall Keep the Faith:”

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 lustre 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 lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.

In Moina Michael's book 'The Miracle Flower' she described the experience as deeply spiritual, and felt as though she was actually being called in person by the voices which had been silenced by death.

The small strip on my “Purple Heart Viola” is inscribed “Official Flower made by Purple Heart Veterans Military Order of the Purple Heart, U.S.A. National Organization of Wounded War Veterans.”

How blessed we are. Each of us.