The Flanders Fields Poppy
Sale
of the First Remembrance Poppy
|
The Flanders Fields Poppy
Sale
of the First Remembrance Poppy
|
| Home/Poppy Umbrella/Flanders Fields Poppy/First Sale |
The Flanders Fields PoppyMoina MichaelInspiration First Sale Memorial Emblem Raising Funds Official Recogniton Tributes Moina's Biography Remembering Poppy Umbrella Hear Last Post 'In Flanders Fields' Armistice Day in Ypres Flanders Memorial Poppy Gardens of Remembrance 1914-1918 ReferenceThe Western FrontThe Ypres Salient Second Battle of Ypres The Somme War Graves Tracing relatives Resources & Links Bibliography PoemsA Soldier's CemeteryIn Flanders Fields In Memoriam We Shall Keep the Faith About the siteWho we areRembrella  |
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On the morning of Saturday 9 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 9 November 1918. Acknowledgements The Miracle Flower, The Story of the Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy, by Moina Michael Copyright Joanna Legg & Graham Parker © 1999 All rights reserved |