As a child, I didn’t realize the significance of Memorial Day. I knew it as Decoration Day, and before I left home, in 1968, we put flowers on all relatives’ graves that we knew. The only relative ignored was the father of my great grandfather, Grover, and my great, great uncles Luther and Lee. Their father was a veteran of the Civil War, Reed Perry Debo.

In my 20s, living in California, I could drive “in the hills” outside Livermore, California, and see poppies growing wild. My soon-to-be husband was a veteran, but neither of us was in a veteran’s organization.

In Ekalaka he joined VFW and later American Legion. We could see wild flowers in Carter County: lupines, crocus, prickly pear and yucca cactus blooms. I joined and led VFW Auxiliary for a couple of years, and learned the significance of the poppies seen each year at Veterans Day.

In Flanders Field, the poem says, poppies were blooming where soldiers’ blood had spilled in the first battle in Ypres, Belgium. That was in May 1915, 102 years ago. They now bloom in other cities all over America and Canada on Memorial Day. In Carter County, Montana, they will bloom on Memorial Day, May 29, 2017. That day the VFW Auxiliary to post 7885 will have a large bouquet of them, free to visitors of Beaver Lodge Cemetery, in Ekalaka, with hope of a generous, free-will donation to benefit veterans.

Later, after the 11 am services at the cemetery, bouquets will be placed at Mainstreet Market and Wagon Wheel Café. Remember fallen veterans. Honor their sacrifice and legacy.