Waterloo and Moina’s red poppies

PETER BUFFA

Do you know what time it is? It’s the unofficial start of summer,

that’s what. And much more importantly, it’s time to honor all those

who lost their lives defending ours.

We seem to have a hard time remembering that at times, even on

Memorial Day. It’s much easier to remember at a time like this,

though, with America’s young men and women putting everything on the

line once again.

Anyone know how Memorial Day started? Anyone want to know? Anyone

think I’m not going to tell you? I didn’t think so.

Memorial Day started just after the Civil War. Now, there was a

time when people had no trouble at all remembering our war dead. An

incredible 25% of American males, many of them young boys, were

killed or maimed during the Civil War. There are about 217 towns,

more or less, whose residents claim that their town was the

birthplace of Memorial Day. One of the most credible claims comes

from the upstate New York town of Waterloo, which as you know, is

where Napoleon met his downfall at the hand of the Duke of

Wellington. OK, maybe not.

In 1865, a Waterloo pharmacist named Henry C. Welles -- no

relation to Orson -- suggested a memorial service at the local

cemeteries to honor the Civil War dead. Decorating the graves of war

dead was already an established custom in the South, even before the

war’s end, where Southern women would decorate the graves of

Confederate soldiers with bouquets and ribbons. A popular hymn at the

time, “Kneel Where Our Loves Are Sleeping,” was dedicated “To The

Ladies of the South who are Decorating the Graves of the Confederate

Dead” -- which is a little long, but you get the point.

Henry Welles’ idea was not setting Waterloo on fire until he

mentioned it to the Seneca County Clerk, a veteran Civil War general

named John B. Murray. With Murray’s backing, the idea took off, and

the whole town pitched in. Besides making wreaths, crosses and

bouquets for every Civil War grave, they draped the town with flags

and evergreen boughs with black streamers, the common symbol at the

time for a family that had lost someone.

The official association of Union Army veterans, the Grand Army of

the Republic, or “GAR,” was a powerful political force until well

into the 20th century. In 1868, the organization’s commander, Gen.

John A. Logan, declared May 30th “Memorial Day” and ordered that

every grave at Arlington Cemetery -- Union and Confederate -- be

decorated with flowers on that date. By the way, all those flowers

and wreaths are why the holiday was called “Decoration Day” for years

and years.

By 1890, almost every state had officially recognized Memorial

Day. Every northern state, that is. The Southern states refused to

give the nod to Memorial Day until after World War I, when the intent

of the holiday was changed to honor the American casualties of every

war. To this day, however, some cities and states in the South set

aside separate days to specifically honor Confederate war dead. In

May 1966, Waterloo was officially named the birthplace of Memorial

Day by President Lyndon Johnson, which really made the other 216

towns mad. In 1971, Congress passed the National Holiday Act,

creating a number of three-day holidays, including Memorial Day,

which became the last Monday in May instead of May 30. It was all

done as a gesture to federal workers, although I would say the rest

of us are totally OK with it.

Since the late 1950’s, soldiers from the 3rd U.S. Infantry, the

“Old Guard,” place American flags at every one of the more than

quarter million gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery on the

Thursday before Memorial Day. In Virginia, on the Saturday before

Memorial Day, Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts from throughout the state

place a candle at each of the 15,000 graves of Union and Confederate

soldiers buried in the National Military Park on the battlefields of

Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania.

And that just leaves Moina Michael, a teacher at the University of

Georgia during World War I. Moina was a patriotic woman who wanted to

do something important for the war effort. She took a leave of

absence and went to New York City to train with the YMCA, which was

helping American soldiers and sailors on their way tofrom Europe. At

the end of a long day, Moina picked up a copy of Ladies Home Journal

and ran across a now famous poem called “In Flanders Field,” written

by a Canadian Army doctor named John McCrae.

The poem is written in the voice of the thousands of Allied

soldiers who died in Belgium and were buried where they fell: “In

Flanders fields, the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row.”

Moved to tears by McCrae’s words, Moina had an idea. The next day,

she made a small poppy out of red crepe paper, with a stem of wire

wrapped in green paper. By the next Memorial Day, Moina and her

co-workers had made thousands of red poppies and were selling them to

raise money for veterans’ groups. Moina Michael’s red poppies spread

across the country like, well, wildflowers. In 1922, the Veterans of

Foreign Wars adopted the red poppies as their primary fundraising

tool, and the little red flowers became the most recognized symbol of

veterans’ assistance. So that’s it then -- Memorial Day and Moina’s

red poppies. Remember what it’s all about. It’s important. I gotta

go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs

Sundays. He may be reached by e-mail at [email protected].