Moina Michael — How the Flanders Field poppy became a symbol of remembrance

Moina Michael

This is the story of how the Flanders Fields Red Poppy was first introduced as a symbol of Remembrance by an American teacher, Miss Moina Michael.

In 1918 Miss Moina Michael was teaching at the University of Georgia, in the town of Athens, USA. Having volunteered for war work with the YMCA she was called up for service with the Overseas YMCA War Workers. In September 1918 she took leave of absence from her post at the university and arrived at the YMCA training headquarters at Columbia University, New York City, where she had originally been a student in 1912-1913.

After completing her training course Moina's hopes of being sent abroad were dashed when she was barred from overseas service due to her age - she was 49. However, Dr J W Gaines, president of the Overseas YMCA Secretaries, helped Moina stay with the organization by giving her a job at the training headquarters where she worked until January 1919.

Moina worked in the "Gemot", a room in the basement of Hamilton Hall. It was a large, gloomy room well-equipped with tables, chairs and other comforts. It was used as a reading room and a general 'get-together' place. Soldiers, sailors and marines also used this room as a place to say farewells to mothers, sisters, wives and girlfriends before embarking for service overseas.

Inspiration for the Memorial Poppy

The idea for the Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy came to Moina Michael while she was working at the YMCA Overseas War Secretaries' headquarters on a Saturday morning in November 1918, two days before the Armistice was declared at 11 o'clock on 11 November.

The Twenty-fifth Conference of the Overseas YMCA War Secretaries was in progress. On passing her desk, a young soldier left a copy of the November Ladies Home Journal on Moina's desk. (He was the son of A G Kneble, Executive Secretary to the War Personnel Board of National War Workers Council, the governing board of the staff of the YMCA Secretaries for Overseas.)

At about 10.30am, when everyone was on duty elsewhere, Moina found a few moments to read the magazine. In it she came across a page which carried a vivid colour illustration for the poem "We Shall Not Sleep" (later named "In Flanders Fields") by the Canadian Army doctor John McCrae.

Reading the poem on this occasion - she had read it many times before - Moina was transfixed by the last verse - "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."

In Moina Michael's book 'The Miracle Flower' she described the experience as deeply spiritual, and she felt as though she was actually being called in person by the voices which had been silenced by death.

At that moment Moina Michael made a personal pledge to 'keep the faith' and vowed always to wear a red poppy of Flanders Fields as a sign of remembrance and as an emblem for "keeping the faith with all who died".

Compelled to make a note of this pledge she hastily scribbled down a response on the back of a used envelope, entitled "We Shall Keep the Faith".

On the morning of Saturday 9th November 1918 three men from the Twenty-fifth Conference of the YMCA Overseas Secretaries appeared at Moina Michael's desk. On behalf of the delegates they asked her to accept a cheque for $10 in appreciation of her efforts to brighten up the headquarters with flowers.

She was touched by the gesture and replied that she would buy twenty-five red poppies with the money. She showed them the illustration for John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields" in the Ladies Journal, together with her poem "We Shall Keep the Faith", which she had written in reply. The delegates took both poems back into the Conference.

After searching the shops for some time that day Moina found one large and twenty-four small artificial red silk poppies in Wanamaker's store. When she returned to duty at the YMCA Headquarters later that evening delegates from the Conference crowded round her asking for poppies to wear. Keeping one poppy for her coat collar she gave out the rest of the poppies to the enthusiastic delegates.

According to Moina, since this was the first group-effort asking for poppies to wear in memory of "all who died in Flanders Fields", and since this group had given her the money with which to buy them, she considered that she had consumated the first sale of the Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy on 9th November 1918.

Beginning the campaign

Encouraged by a positive reaction to the idea by the press and the adoption of the Poppy emblem by subsequent YMCA conferences and a few organisations, Moina Michael was determined to put all her energy towards getting the Poppy emblem adopted in the United States as a national memorial symbol.

She began a tireless campaign at her own expense, starting with a letter to her congressman in December 1918 asking him to put the idea to the War Department, which he immediately did. She wanted to act swiftly so that this new national emblem might be already be produced in the form of pins, on postcards, etc. in time for the signing of peace in June 1919.

After the war the numerous signs related to the war - the Red Cross, War Loan insignia, Service Flags, etc. - which had been evident all over the country during the war would be taken down. Moina considered that a replacement emblem, i.e. the poppy, could be used to fill those empty spaces as a symbolic reminder of those who had not returned home to celebrate the end of the war.

Her religious upbringing inspired her to believe that the Flanders Memorial Poppy was indeed a spiritual symbol with more meaning behind it than pure sentimentalism; she equated the new optimism for a world returned to peace after the "war to end all wars" to the magnificent rainbow which appeared in the sky after the terrible biblical flood.

The Torch and the Poppy Emblem

Originally Moina intended to use the simple red, four petaled poppy of Flanders. But in December 1918 she was put in touch with a designer, Mr Lee Keedick, who offered to design a national emblem under contract; he produced flags and pins of the final design, this being a border of blue on a white background, with the Torch of Liberty and a Poppy entwined in the centre, containing the colours of the Allied Flags, red, white, blue, black, green and yellow.

The Torch and Poppy emblem was first used on 14th February, 1919 in Carnegie Hall, New York City, at a lecture given by the Canadian ace pilot, Colonel William A Bishop titled "Air Fighting in Flanders Fields". As the lecture ended a large flag with the emblem on it was unfurled at the back of the stage.

In spite of the interest raised by the appearance of the new emblem at the time, and Moina's continued efforts to publicise the campaign, this emblem was not taken up by any group or individual to help establish it as a national symbol.

Indeed, there was so little public interest in the enterprise that eventually the designer, Mr Keedick, abandoned his efforts to pursue the campaign.

During the winter of 1918 Moina Michael continued working for the Staff of the Overseas YMCA Secretaries. She visited wounded and sick men from Georgia who were in nine of the debarkation hospitals in and around New York City, to find what could be done for them other than what the hospitals were doing.

By March 1919 she had moved back to Georgia to take up her place at the University of Georgia. With the return of thousands of ex-servicemen from that time Moina realised that there was not only a need to honour the memory of those who had died in the service of their country, but also a need to remember that those who were returning also had mental, physical and spiritual needs.

During the summer months of 1919 Moina taught a class of disabled servicemen, there being several hundred in rehabilitation at the University of Georgia. Learning about their needs at first hand gave her the impetus to widen the scope of the Poppy idea, to develop it so that it could be used to help all servicemen who needed help for themselves and for their dependents.

In September 1921 delegates at the Auxiliary to the American Legion Convention agreed that disabled American war veterans could make the poppies sold in the United States, thus generating much needed income for veterans who had no other income. The Auxiliary provided all the material and had it pre-cut for forming into flowers.

The American and French Children's League

The expansion of the scope of the Memorial Poppy to raise money for the benefit of those who were suffering as a result of the war was largely due to the work of a French woman, Madame Guérin.

Madame Guérin had been present at the National American Legion Convention in September 1920 when the Memorial Poppy was proclaimed as the United States' national emblem of remembrance. In the name of the American and French Children's League Madame Guérin sold millions of poppies, made by French women, throughout the United States to aid rehabilitation in the areas of France devastated by the First World War.

In 1921 Madame Guérin sent French women to London to sell poppies, which introduced the Memorial Poppy idea to the British. Madame Guérin visited Earl Haig and persuaded him to adopt the Flanders Poppy for the British Legion, which was done in the autumn of 1921.

The American Legion Adopts the Memorial Poppy

By 1920 Moina Michael was beginning to lose hope that the Memorial Poppy idea would ever come to fruition and was in a dilemma about whether to pursue her own academic career or whether to abandon it in order to devote herself entirely to the Memorial Poppy campaign.

On 18 August, 1920 she discovered by chance that the Georgia Department of the American Legion was to convene in two days' time in Atlanta. She searched out the delegates in Atlanta prior to the convention and the Navy representative promised to present her case for the Memorial Poppy to the Convention.

The Georgia Convention subsequently adopted the Poppy but omitted the Torch symbol. The Convention also agreed to endorse the movement to have the Poppy adopted by the National American Legion and resolved to urge each member of the American Legion in Georgia to wear a red poppy each 11th November.

One month later on 29 September, 1920 the National American Legion convened in Cleveland and agreed to make the Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy its national emblem of remembrance.

Official Recognition of the Memorial Poppy

The Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy was adopted by the following organisations in the years following the end of the Great War:

9 November, 1918:
The Twenty-fifth Conference of YMCA Overseas Secretaries, Columbia University, New York City
4 December, 1918:
The Twenty-eighth Conference of YMCA Overseas Secretaries, Columbia University, New York City
6 February, 1919:
The Calvary Baptist Church, New York City
9 April, 1919:
The Home Economics Club, Hannibal, Missouri
Summer, 1919:
Several patriotic organisations in Georgia
20 August, 1920:
Georgia Department American Legion
29 September, 1920:
The National American Legion
1920:
The American and French Children's League
September 1921:
The National American Legion Auxiliary
Autumn 1921:
The Earl Haig's British Legion Appeal Fund
Spring, 1922:
The Veterans of Foreign Wars

Although Moina Michael was not interested in personal reward or credit for her work, she did prize the citations and public recognition because they brought honour to Georgia and to a Georgia woman. Of the many tributes paid to Miss Michael for her services to disabled servicement these are a few.

Biography of Moina Michael

Acknowledgements

The Miracle Flower, The Story of the Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy, by Moina Michael