JAY – An 81-year-old tradition will be continued Thursday, May 15, when the Frank L. Mitchell Post, VFW and Auxiliary, holds its annual Buddy Poppy sale.
Adopted by the Veterans of Foreign Wars as its official memorial flower after the first national distribution in 1922, the VFW decided the following year to have the poppies made by disabled and needy veterans.
They would be paid for their work to provide them with some financial assistance.
The plan was formally adopted during the VFW’s 1923 encampment and the next year disabled veterans begin making the flowers in a Pittsburgh factory.
The designation, Buddy Poppy, was adopted at that time and the name was registered with the U.S. Patent Office in 1924.
Sale of replicas of the original Flanders poppy of John McCrae’s poem, “In Flanders Fields,” originated in some Allied countries immediately after the armistice that ended World War I.
In 1921, the Franco-American Children’s League began the first nationwide sale of poppies to benefit children in the devastated areas of France and Belgium.
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