Community Corner

Veterans Sell Buddy Poppies

Volunteers will be out this weekend in Lake Forest, Lake Bluff.

 

It’s been a tradition since 1922 for Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States to sell Buddy Poppies over Memorial Day weekend. The poppies are more than just a pretty flower. They symbolize hope for many who have served this country.

The poppies are assembled by disabled veterans, and the proceeds of the fundraising campaign are used to benefit disabled and needy veterans and the widows and orphans of deceased veterans.

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A brief history of the artificial poppy:

In the World War I battlefields of Belgium, poppies grew wild amid the ravaged landscape. How could such a pretty little flower grow wild while surrounded by death and destruction? The overturned soils of battle enabled the poppy seeds to be covered, thus allowing them to grow and to forever serve as a reminder of the bloodshed during that and future wars.

Find out what's happening in Lake Forest-Lake Bluffwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The poppy movement was inspired by the poem "In Flanders Fields" written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae of the Canadian forces in 1915 before the United States entered World War I. Selling replicas of the original Flanders' poppy originated in some of the allied countries immediately after the Armistice.

In Flanders Fields

By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918) 

 

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.


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