Moina Michaels Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 665

Moina Michael, her name is not familiar. Most people would not recognize her likeness in a photograph. Some have never heard of her, yet she started a tradition which has become familiar and is still observed annually, the wearing of a memorial Poppy on Poppy Day.

Just before the armistice was signed ending World War I, Moina Michael was working at her desk at the YMCA Overseas Headquarters in New York City. It was early November 1918, when she was given a copy of a magazine and as she leafed through it, she read a poem called "We shall not Sleep", more commonly known now as, "In Flanders Fields." It was written by Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian physician and poet who died in his own field hospital before the war ended.

The poem in which the dead speak to the living greatly moved Moina, but it was the last stanza that most impressed her.

On November 9, 1944, the liberty ship S.S. Moina Michael was launched, named for the woman from Georgia who was determined that the men who fought and died in World War I would not be forgotten in the roar of the 1920's. One of 2,770 such merchant vessels built between 194 and 1945, she carried cargo and troops to the battle fields. Moina Michael continue her work in the states while ship bearing her name crossed the ocens. For the above accomplishments it was determined by the membership to name Post 665, Moina Michael.