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Show support for veterans with Buddy Poppy cards

Mesabi Daily News - 5/22/2017

A while back it was time for our VFW Auxiliary president, LuAnne Thompson, and me to deliver the annual Buddy Poppy cards to the Gilbert businesses. I would be the driver, and LuAnne the runner. We started out with LuAnne being super-organized, as always, and me cleaning out the back seat so she'd have room for the cards, the donation cans and her trusty notebooks, where she records every donation. And she was dressed for the job in her poppy vest and poppy earrings.

I took note of the changes in the last few years, like Stanley and Eleanor's hardware store on the main street, where World War II veteran Stan was proprietor well into his 90s. It's closed now, and Stan and Eleanor have moved from their home above the store. And Nick's Bar, where owner, the late Nick Vukelich, a veteran of the Korean War, would gladly give his donation, and I remember how he once gave me a placemat that told the story of the Buddy Poppy.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars website tells that in 1922, the VFW conducted its first poppy distribution, becoming the first veterans' organization to organize a nationwide project. The poppy soon was adopted as the official memorial flower of the VFW, and in 1923 the decision was made that they would be assembled by disabled and needy veterans, who would be paid for their work to provide them with financial assistance. The next year, disabled veterans at the Buddy Poppy factory in Pittsburgh assembled VFW Buddy Poppies. The designation "Buddy Poppy" was adopted at that time.

In 1924, the name Buddy Poppy was registered with the U.S. Patent Office. The website says, "We've made that trademark a guarantee that all poppies bearing that name and the VFW label are genuine products of the work of disabled and needy veterans." Today Buddy Poppies are still assembled by disabled and needy veterans in VA Hospitals. The VFW Buddy Poppy program 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 Children.

The good thing about donating to the Buddy Poppy program - all the money goes to help veterans in need. So on the day officially designated as Poppy Day, we set out again on our quest for donations. This time it was the "4 L's" - LuAnne and Lee Hunter in one location and Laurel Roering and me at the post office. And a regular on every other Poppy Day, but who was out of town on that day this year, is the "fifth L" - Yvonne Lopp. Back at the VFW Club, Poppy Cards were offered for monetary donations, and the cards now hang on display in time for Memorial Day, many of them given in memory of loved ones now gone. And each year as Memorial Day approaches, I am reminded of John McCrae's poem of a World War I battlefield in Belgium, "In Flanders Fields."

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.

So remember the veterans who have died in battle as this Memorial Day approaches. Come to a fine pre-Memorial Day program now in its 19th year, presented by the Eveleth-Gilbert National Honor Society at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 25, in the high school gym. And Buddy Poppies will be distributed that evening.