May 26, 2013 3 min read

Americans, by nature, are a patriotic lot.

We fly the flag, rise when the national anthem is played, cheer when our brave fighting men and women return from harm’s way, and mourn when they do not.

This sense of patriotism is something we develop as we grow from childhood to adolescence and adulthood. And today, when the nation celebrates Memorial Day, hopefully there will be a new generation coming of age that will discover that this holiday means more than the opening of swimming pools, firing up the grill and taking a day off from school.

But, let’s be honest, many of us grew up thinking just that.

Presuming the weather was even modestly agreeable, Memorial Day weekend meant taking a dip in the pool or a lake, and it didn’t matter what the thermometer because this was the unofficial start of summer.

Surely, many of us have childhood memories of watching parades and seeing people appreciatively greet men in uniform and buying red fabric flowers. They were called poppies. As adolescence morphed into adulthood, the meaning of Memorial Day finally took hold. Helping us understand that true meaning was Lt. Col. John McCrae, a Canadian physician who wrote a poem after witnessing the death of his friend, Lt. Alex Helmer.

The poem he wrote is called “In Flanders Fields,” and it is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres Salient in Belgium in 1915.

Here is part of it:

“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.”

Inspired by “In Flanders Fields,” Moina Michael, a schoolteacher from Georgia, wrote in 1915:

“We cherish too, the Poppy red

That grows on fields where valor led,

It seems to signal to the skies

That blood of heroes never dies.”

Seldom does a Memorial Day come and go that images are resurrected of a grizzled World War II veteran in a baggy uniform handing out red flowers.

Or course, we still think of swimming and cookouts today, but we also should think of other servicemen today, fighting in a completely different Flanders fields, spilling their poppy-red blood.

For those who have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day, take a moment between a dip in the pool and a burger on the grill to remember them.