Why the Red Poppy? Storytelling for Memorial Day

Why the Poppy Always Finds Its Way into My Memorial Day Storytelling & Content.

I’ve helped cultivate Memorial Day posts for years around the DMV. Clients trust me with their message. They often say my posts feel different, deeper, and unique. While most focus on the flag or the word “remember,” I always include the red poppy.

Not one client has ever asked me why the poppy, but they love that it’s different, they expected it, and it has grown to be a consistent in setting them out. It makes their posts seem more personal.

Memorial Day is my favorite holiday to create content for. Not because it’s easy, but because it takes me back to my childhood.

A Childhood Memory That Shaped My Understanding of Sacrifice

My mother would always take me shopping around Memorial Day, and there was always a man outside the store in a veteran’s cap, handing out fake red poppies. Now, if you’ve ever met my mother, you’d know she’s absurdly frugal. She wouldn’t give a dime to the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, or anyone standing outside a store — she’d say, “Don’t look, keep walking, don’t get too close.” But not the veterans.

With them, everything changed. She’d pull out the biggest bill from her wallet and say, “Go buy a poppy and thank him for his service. Tell him you’re sorry for his losses. And remember, because of the sacrifices his friends made, you get to live in a world like this."

They often cried, sometimes they hugged me tightly, and every time we took that poppy home.

She told me to protect it — because it was a precious symbol, not of life, but of death.

At home, the poppy would be added to a bouquet that sat by my bed. When I was about six, my mother read me In Flanders Fields and explained why that poem mattered. Why they mattered. Those men outside the store — they weren’t just fundraising. They were remembering fallen comrades. Friends they fought beside. Men they left behind.

A Different Kind of Conviction

As I got older, I began to understand the difference between the veterans of my childhood and the generations that followed. I don’t mean in valor, conviction is present in all eras of service, but in the way they built community from abandonment. Many were left behind by the government, so they created legions. They supported one another. They remembered together.

Thomas Leaf(Korea), Grandfather of MLof Strategies founder

My grandfather had that kind of conviction. At 14, he lied about his age and joined the Merchant Marines to support the Allies in WWII. Later, during Korea, his prior service wasn’t recognized. He had children by then. He could’ve gotten out. But when he was drafted, he tore up the papers and said, “Enlist me. I will never be drafted to serve my country. I will go because I choose to go.”

My grandmother, Scottish by birth, had a father who served in WWII, newly married but unwilling to risk the German invasion of the British Isles. Her uncle died in the Great War, on the very fields of Flanders.

This was a different culture of remembrance. One I miss.

Keeping the Memory Alive

Over the years, Memorial Day has shifted: sales, BBQs, beach trips. Even my own children don’t know what the poppy means. But I keep it alive — in every piece of content we create for this day. It’s there, a tiny red flower with a weight heavier than most symbols we use.

In Flanders Fields

by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae (1915)

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.