MEMORIAL DAY AND MOINA MICHAEL

 

 

        Memorial Day, once known as “Decoration Day,” is a federal holiday in the United States for honoring and mourning the military personnel who have died in the performance of their military duties while serving in the United States Armed Forces.  The holiday is observed on the last Monday of May.  From 1868 to 1970 the holiday was formally observed on May 30th.

        Memorial Day is considered the unofficial beginning of summer in the U.S. while Labor Day, the first Monday in September, marks the unofficial start of autumn.

According to the Library of Congress website, “Southern women decorated the graves of soldiers even before the Civil War’s end.  Records reveal that by 1865, Mississippi, Virginia and South Carolina all had precedents for Memorial Day.  The earlier Southern Memorial Day celebrations were simple, somber occasions for veterans and their families to honor the dead and tend to local cemeteries.  In following years the Ladies’ Memorial Association and other groups increasingly focused rituals on preserving Confederate Culture and the Lost Cause of the Confederate narrative.

        In July 1862, women in Savannah, Georgia decorated the graves at Laurel Grove Cemetery of Colonel Francis S. Bartow and his comrades who died at the Battle of Manassas the year before.

The United States National Park Service and numerous scholars attribute the beginning of a Memorial Day practice in the South to a group of women in Columbus, Georgia. These women were the Ladies Memorial Association of Columbus.  They were represented by Mary Ann Williams (Mrs. Charles J. Williams) who, as secretary, wrote a letter to the press in March 1866 asking their assistance in establishing an annual holiday to decorate the graves of soldiers throughout the South.  The letter was reprinted in several southern states and the plans were noted in newspapers in the north.  The date of April 26 was chosen and the holiday was observed in Atlanta, Augusta, Macon, Columbus and elsewhere in Georgia as well as Montgomery, Alabama, Memphis, Tennessee, Louisville, Kentucky, New Orleans, Louisiana, Jackson, Mississippi and other regions across the south. General John A. Logan commented on the observances in a speech to veterans on July 4, 1866 in Salem, Illinois. After General Logan’s General Order No.11 to the Grand Army of the Republic to observe May 30, 1868, the earlier version of the holiday began to be referred to as Confederate Memorial Day.

A year after the war’s end, in April 1866, four women of Columbus Mississippi gathered together to decorate the graves of the Confederate soldiers.  They also felt moved to honor the Union soldiers buried there and to note the grief of their families by honoring their graves as well.  The story of this gesture of humanity and reconciliation is held by some writers as the inspiration for the original Memorial Day despite its occurring last among the claimed inspirations.

        The name “Memorial Day”, which was first attested in 1882, gradually became more common than “Decoration Day” after World War II but was not declared the official name by federal law until 1967. On June 28, 1968 Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which moved four holidays, including Memorial Day, from their traditional dates to a specified Monday in order to create a convenient three-day weekend.  The change moved Memorial Day from its traditional May 3o date to the last Monday in May.  The law took effect at the federal level in 1971, and all 50 states adopted Congress’s change of date within a few years.

The American Legion members were always about during my youth prior to Memorial Day and on the actual day, distributing paper versions of the poppies, due in fact of two important people; Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a physician with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, who wrote the poem, “In Flanders Fields,” describing the fields of poppies that grew along the soldiers’ graves in Flanders, and Miss Moina Michael, a YWCA worker, who was so inspired by McCrae’s poem, when she attended a YWCA Overseas War Secretaries’ conference, she wore a silk poppy pinned to her coat and distributed over two dozen more to the members present.  In 1920 the National American Legion adopted it as its official symbol of remembrance.        One of a number of great Walton County citizens who brought fame and honor to our county and town, Moina Michael was born on August 15, 1869 and lived on what is now known as 3698 Moina Michael Road in Good Hope.  She was the eldest daughter and second of seven children of John Marion Michael, a Confederate veteran of the American Civil War, and Alice Sherwood Wise.  Both sides of her family had Huguenot ancestry, with origins in Brittany and Flanders respectively.  Her family was wealthy and owned a cotton plantation until 1898.  She was educated at Braswell Academy in Morgan County and the Martin Institute in Jefferson, Georgia.She became a teacher in 1885, initially in Good Hope and then in Monroe.  She also taught at the Lucy Cobb Institute and Normal School, both located in Athens. During 1912-13 Miss Michael studied at Columbia University in New YorkMoina Michael visited Europe in June and July 1914.  She was in Germany when the First World War broke out in August 1914, and travelled to Rome to return home to the US.  In Rome she assisted around 12,000 US tourists to seek passage back across the Atlantic.  She returned to the US on the RMS Carpathia and returned to teaching at the Normal School in Athens.

She was a professor at the University of Georgia in April 1917 when the U. S. entered the war.  Taking a leave of absence, she volunteered to assist in the New York-based training headquarters for overseas YWCA workers.

        On November 9, 1918, she was so inspired by Lt. Colonel John McCrae’s poem, “In Flanders Fields,” she wrote a poem in response called, “We Shall Keep the Faith.”  Miss Michael vowed to always wear a red poppy as a symbol of remembrance for those who served in the war.

At the completion of the war, she returned to the University of Georgia where she taught a class for disabled servicemen. She saw immediately the need to provide financial aid and occupational support for these servicemen and came up with the idea of selling silk poppies as a means of raising funds to assist the disabled veterans.  In 1921 her efforts resulted in the poppy being adopted as a symbol of remembrance for war veterans by the American Legion Auxiliary and by Earl Haig’s British Legion Appeal Fund, later named The Royal British Legion.

        Miss Michael retired from the University of Georgia in 1934 and published an autobiography, “The Miracle Flower: The Story of the Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy,” in 1941. Copies of this book can obtained by contacting the Walton County Historical Society.

After her death on May 10, 1944, The May 12th issue of the Walton Tribune carried a front page obituary: “Poppy Lady” Dead After Noble Career, which read in part; “News of the death of Miss Moina Michael, renowned “Poppy Lady,” at the Athens General Hospital early Wednesday morning, was received with much sorrow in Monroe where Miss Michael had been born and reared.

        Funeral services were to occur at the First Baptist Church of Athens this Thursday afternoon at three o’clock and interment will follow at Rest Haven Cemetery in Monroe.      

        Miss Michael suggested the poppy as a fitting emblem for Memorial Day and lived to see her suggestion observed throughout the United States, Great Britain and 53 other nations of the world, as it brought in annually approximately $7,000,000 for the aid of veterans.

Two weeks before her death Miss Michael completed work on 300 poppies for the huge poppy anchor, which will be launched at Annapolis on May 30th.  She had fashioned these anchors with her own hands since 1919, and all these years later these launchings have been an event of national interest.

        Miss Michael resided in Athens for many years where she was director of Winnie Davis Hall, a dormitory on the Co-Ordinate College campus for 35 years, but was a frequent visitor to Monroe.  She retired in 1938.

        It was said Miss Michael planned much of her funeral service during her long illness. Her body was to lie in state for an hour preceding the service and an American flag she made will drape her simple mahogany casket.”

        On November 9, 1948, the Post Office released a 3 cent stamp honoring Moina Michael. At the right of the stamp is Miss Michael’s portrait and name. At the left “Founder of Memorial Poppy.”

        Monroe was fortunate in having a citizen of such magnitude and foresight to bring honor to our town and is forever known far and wide as “The Poppy Lady.”