By RANDY GADDO

This year on May 27, just before Memorial Day on May 29, in Peachtree City you will see men and women standing outside various stores such as Wal-Mart, Kroger’s and Kmart offering small red silk flowers with green stems.

Don’t pass them by. They are there for a very important reason, and the red flowers, called Buddy Poppies, embody the history of their purpose.

Please accept and wear a Buddy Poppy to honor our Veterans who have died serving our Nation. No monetary donation is necessary to receive a Buddy Poppy. However, monetary donations are accepted to fund health and welfare programs for veterans (to include active duty) and their families. No donation is too big or too small.

This is a scene that will be repeated in cities throughout the United States.

The men and women in Peachtree City represent the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post 9949. In 1924, the VFW registered the name Buddy Poppy with the U.S. Patent Office. No other organization, firm or individual can use the term “Buddy Poppy.”

That’s a lot of effort for a little flower, and you might wonder how this came to be and why you should be proud to display it.

The Buddy Poppy has its origin in World War I. It started, not as an American tradition, but as a French one. Shortly after the war, Madame E. Guerin, founder of the American and French Children’s League, became concerned that people were “forgetting too soon those sleeping in Flanders Field.”

Madame Guerin was inspired by the poem “In Flanders Fields,” written by Canadian Colonel John McCrae. The poem talked of poppies growing between the rows of white crosses in the Allied graveyard there. Guerin decided the poppy was the most appropriate memorial flower.

She began attending the conventions of any serviceman’s organization in France that would allow her to speak. Her request was always the same: to enact the following resolution: “Be it resolved that every member, if possible, and his or her family shall wear a silk red poppy.”

In April 1919, the “Poppy Lady,” as Madame Guerin was now known, arrived in the United States. She came to speak in support of the “Victory Loan,” financial assistance to help France’s homeless and jobless get back on their feet.

While in the U.S. she began her quest to have a service organization sponsor the poppy program in the U.S. Finally, in May, 1922 the VFW conducted its first nationwide poppy distribution. Later that year the VFW adopted the poppy as its official memorial flower.

When the Children’s League dissolved in 1922, with it went the silk poppy manufacturing. The VFW had great difficulty obtaining enough poppies for the 1923 sales. They used a surplus of French poppies and a firm in New York City manufacturing artificial flowers provided the balance.

This led to the idea of paying disabled or needy American veterans to make the poppies. Immediately following the plan’s adoption, a VFW poppy factory was set up in Pittsburgh, Penn. The U.S. Veterans Bureau regional manager in Pittsburgh sent all veterans who would be manufacturing poppies for the 1924 sale to a training workshop.

The name that would be the flower’s trademark came from these early disabled poppy makers. The name just “grew” out of the poppy makers’ remembrances of their buddies who never came back from war. Undoubtedly, because it expressed so simply the deepest significance of the Poppy Plan, the name stuck. All over the country, the little red flower became known as the “Buddy Poppy.”

Currently, disabled veterans in 11 different locations assemble the little red flowers of silk-like fabric. The VA Facilities in which they are made are located in: Leavenworth and Topeka, Kan.; Biloxi, Miss.; Temple, Texas; Martinsburg, W.V.; Hampton, Va.; Milwaukee, Wis.; Dayton, Ohio; and White City and Grand Rapids, Mich.

The minimal assessment (cost of Buddy Poppies) to VFW posts provides compensation to the veterans who assemble the poppies, provides financial assistance in maintaining state and national veterans’ rehabilitation and service programs and partially supports the VFW National Home for orphans and widows of our nation’s veterans.

Buddy Poppy proceeds represent no profit to any VFW unit. All the money contributed by the public for Buddy Poppies is used in the cause of veterans’ welfare, or for the well being of their needy dependents and the orphans of veterans.

So, on the 27th, when you see these folks out there, please stop and get your poppy, wear it proudly, and know that your donation is helping veterans and their families.

Special Note: This year’s Peachtree City Memorial Day celebration will be held on May 29, beginning at a new time, 9 a.m., at the City Hall Plaza.

A golf cart procession open to public participation will begin at 8:30 from the Gathering Place and wind around Lake Peachtree to City Hall Plaza. Traditionally, more than 200 golf carts are in this procession.

The event at City Hall Plaza will include WWII era live music, WWII weapons and equipment display, honors to the colors, reading of student essay winners and performance by JROTC silent drill cadets.

In case of inclement weather the event will be held in First Presbyterian Church across the street from City Hall Plaza. For information, call 770-631-2542.

Editor’s note: The writer is a retired Marine, a member of Peachtree City VFW Post 9949, and along with his 11-year-old son, Alex, will be one of the many distributing poppies for the VFW on the 27th.

In Flander’s Field
by John McCrae

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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