Paris, Kentucky Poppy Festival Honors 13 US Service Members Killed With Red Poppies

A Paris, Ky. farm is using thousands of blooming red poppies to honor fallen soldiers this Memorial Day weekend through its annual Poppy Festival at Middle Springs Farm.

Justin Menke, owner of Middle Springs Farm, said, "The symbol of the red poppy and being able to have them bloom on Memorial Day is kind of a really special thing," and he added that the farm has marked the moment with 13 crosses.

CNN

Menke said, "this year we have lost 13 US service members that have been killed and so we have the 13 crosses out here to honor them on this Memorial Day."

Organizers placed 13 crosses in the poppy fields, and due to weather they extended the festival so the poppy fields will be open next weekend as well.

More than 350 people gathered May 25 at the Northwest Louisiana Veterans Cemetery in Shreveport, La. for the annual Memorial Day program to pay tribute to those who died in service to their country.

Lee Jeter, president of the Northwest Louisiana Veterans Cemetery Foundation Board, said, "Today, we’ll continue to honor those, not only those that have already passed away," including those "in hospitals with wounds they may not recover from" and those "still on the battlefield today."

LEX 18 News

The ceremony featured guest speaker Raymond Alley, a retired lieutenant commander, who described visiting a cemetery in Tunisia to see fresh flowers on graves 70 years after many of those people died.

The program included more than 4,800 American flags, and the cemetery spans 20 acres and is the final resting place for nearly 5,000 veterans and family members.

A separate Memorial Day feature traced the red poppy’s origins to Moina Belle Michael, a Georgia schoolteacher who read a wartime poem two days before the end of World War I and launched a campaign that turned the red poppy into an enduring symbol of sacrifice.

The story says Michael was born on Aug. 15, 1869, near Good Hope in Walton County, Georgia, and it recounts that when the United States entered the war in April 1917 she volunteered with the YMCA Overseas War Secretaries organization in New York.

It also describes how Michael, on the morning of Nov. 9, 1918, purchased 25 red silk poppies to distribute among her YMCA colleagues and wrote that she had "consummated the first sale of the Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy."

The feature adds that her effort eventually reached more than 50 countries and raised billions of dollars for disabled veterans and their families, while the Veterans of Foreign Wars organized the first nationwide poppy distribution before Memorial Day in 1922.