Poppy Day, an annual event sponsored by the American Legion Auxiliary, will be observed Friday and Saturday by the American Legion Post 218 Auxiliary.
Booths will be set up between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Friday and 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. Saturday, in front of Home National Bank and the Lost Frontier Restaurant in Thorntown, said Carrol Coffman, publicity chair for the event.
Each year, more than 25 million bright-red crepe paper poppies, the color symbolizing the blood shed on World War I battlefields in Belgium, are made by disabled veterans, then given away to honor all those who have served and died in the nation’s wars.
Donations are accepted. “All of the donations go to help both disabled and hospitalized veterans,” Coffman said.
A crepe poppy is made of nine pieces of paper; each flower requires 13 assembly steps.
John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Field,” which opens, “In Flanders Field the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row ...” helped popularize poppies as a symbol of World War I casualties.
Written in May 1915, it was inspired by the sight of poppies blooming in a field during the Second Battle of Ypres, April-May 1915.
More than 90,000 soldiers vanished in three battles at Ypres between 1914 and 1918 — their bodes were either never found or never identified, according to military histories.
Poppies only bloom in disturbed soil; devastating artillery barrages preceded ground attacks in World War I, churning square miles of earth into muck — and a perfect habitat for poppies.
“Flanders Field says it all,” said Jo Amick, incoming president of the Lebanon American Legion Post 113 auxiliary.
Donations for Poppy Day are being accepted at the post, 1020 W. Hendricks Drive, Amick said.
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Legion Auxiliary to distribute poppies
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