Molalla and Colton schools are celebrating Veterans Day with three separate assemblies this year.
On Thursday at 8:30 a.m., Colton High School is holding its Veterans Day assembly, in the high school gym, featuring speaker Cal Graham, a former World War II prisoner-of-war.
In Molalla Veterans Day assemblies are being held this year on Friday at Maple Grove Elementary School, from 11 to 11:45 a.m. and at Molalla River Middle School at 1 p.m.
The Maple Grove ceremony will include patriotic songs performed by the students. The middle school assembly features a flag ceremony, student presentations and speakers including Cal Graham, and Michelle Nelson speaking on women in the military.
On Saturday, the public is invited to come to the Molalla Moose Lodge and help package Christmas gifts to be sent to the U.S. troops overseas by Molalla’s Patriotic Christmas project.
Finally, the Molalla VFW Post 3973 and the Molalla Ladies Auxiliary 3973 will be carrying on the long-standing Veterans’ Day tradition of handing out Buddy Poppies on Saturday, Nov. 10 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Veterans’ Day is Monday, Nov. 11.
Volunteers will be handing out the poppies all around the Molalla, Mulino and Meadowbrook areas.
The red poppies have evoked memories and emotions of war ever since the publication of a poem written by Col. John McCrae of Canada more than 75 years ago.
The poem, “In Flander’s Field,” describes blowing red fields among the battleground of the fallen.
For more than 75 years, the VFW’s Buddy Poppy program has raised millions of dollars in support of veterans’ welfare and the well being of their dependents.
The VFW conducted its first poppy distribution before Memorial Day in 1922, becoming the first veterans’ organization to organize a nationwide distribution.
The poppy soon was adopted as the official memorial flower of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States.
It was during the 1923 encampment that the VFW decided that VFW Buddy Poppies be assembled by disabled and needy veterans who would be paid for their work to provide them with some form of financial assistance.
The plan was formally adopted during the VFW’s 1923 encampment. The next year, disabled veterans at the Buddy Poppy factory in Pittsburgh assembled VFW Buddy Poppies.
The VFW guarantees that all poppies bearing that name and the VFW label are genuine products of the work of disabled and needy veterans.
Today, VFW Buddy Poppies are still assembled by disabled and needy veterans in VA Hospitals.
