This month, and throughout the summer, local women will be distributing red poppies to raise awareness about veterans services.

“We were doing it only on Memorial Day, but we wanted to bring awareness to what Memorial Day is about,” said Dani Huck, president of the American Legion Auxiliary Unit 41 in Baker City.

Two different types of poppies are twined together.

The crepe paper poppy is handmade by veterans for the American Legion to distribute, and the “Buddy Poppy” benefits Veterans of Foreign Wars assistance programs.

The poppies are not sold — they are “distributed” with the request for a donation.

“One hundred percent — down to the penny — goes to veterans services,” Huck said.

She said 75 percent of proceeds stays in Baker City, and 25 percent goes to the veterans who craft the poppies.

“We send poppies all around the world,” Huck said.

Locally, three Auxiliary members are distributing poppies — Huck, Trudy Ingraham and Nancy Goodwin.

Huck said last year they gave out 2,500 poppies.

“We would like to thank the gentleman for his generous $100 donation last year for a single poppy,” Huck said. “Thank you so much everyone, young and older, no matter how much the donation, for your continued support of our Armed Forces who gave their last full measure by sacrificing their lives for us at home.”

They will be handing out poppies at local stores, as well as community events, including the Hells Canyon Motorcycle Rally and Miners Jubilee.

Why a poppy?

The credit goes to a poem — “In Flanders Fields,” written in 1915 by Lt. Col. John McCrae, MD, who was serving on the Western Front in World War I, to honor soldiers killed in battle.

Huck said the popularity of the red poppy as a memorial flower to those who sacrificed their lives in war began in November of 1918 when Miss Moina Michael was so moved by McCrae’s poem — which includes the famous lines, “In Flanders fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row” — that she bought a bouquet of poppies on impulse and handed them to businessmen meeting at the New York YMCA where she worked. She asked them to wear the poppy as a tribute to the fallen.

Later, Michael spearheaded a campaign to adopt the poppy as the national symbol of sacrifice. In 1923, the poppy became the official flower of the American Legion in memory of the soldiers who fought on the battlefields during World War I.

See more in the May 18, 2016, issue of the Baker City Herald.