VFW Buddy Poppy drive this weekend

This weekend, on Saturday, May 30, and Sunday, May 31, veterans from local VFW Post 12043 will be in front of both Fry’s and Bashas’ and outside the Sunrise Café taking donations for their Buddy Poppies.

Maricopa resident Dean Wyse, Past VFW District 10 Commander and a Vietnam veteran, lost 74 shipmates when his ship was destroyed in a collision in 1969. “Cruising through those open waters, my destroyer was cut in two by an Australian aircraft carrier,” he said. Wyse will be among the vets this weekend with poppies in hand, helping to aid others who have served their country and are now needy or disabled.

In 1922 the VFW held its first poppy sale. Two years later the name “Buddy Poppy” became a guarantee that the flower bearing the VFW name is a product of disabled and needy veterans who assemble the poppies in VA hospitals across the nation. VFW posts compensate these workers and donations go to support the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ charities and welfare programs for disabled vets and their dependents.

The “Buddy” Poppy was first used to evoke the memories and emotions of war in a poem written by Lt. Col. John McCrae, M.D. of Canada. The poem, “In Flanders Fields,” describes blowing red poppies on the fields where the fallen soldiers lie.

In Flander’s Fields
By Lt.Col. John McCrae, M.D.

“In Flanders Fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead.
Short days ago,
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved and now we lie,
In Flanders Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe
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.”

If you go:

What: VFW Buddy Poppy drive
Where: Bashas’ or Fry’s and Sunrise Café
When: Saturday and Sunday, May 30-31, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Cost: Donation

Staff photo