3c Moina Michael stamp

This Moina Michael Issue stamp features a portrait of Moina Michael and a poppy plant. Moina Michael, a professor at the University of Georgia, was inspired by John McCrae’s “In Flanders Field” poem about the First World War; she raised money for disabled veterans by selling silk poppies in remembrance of war veterans.

United States; Georgia; First World War; military; war; veteran; poppy

Veterans' advocate Moina Belle Michael was born in Georgia, 1869. She grew up with a strong sense of the importance of military service to one's country or one's cause, her father having fought with the Confederate States Army in some of the most important campaigns of the Civil War.

A highly respected teacher, she read Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae's poem, In Flanders' Fields, memorializing the fallen men on this Belgian battlefield. In response, she wrote her own poem, We Shall Keep the Faith.

Oh! You who sleep in Flanders' fields,

Sleep sweet - to rise anew,

We caught the torch you threw,

And holding high we kept

The faith with those who died.

We cherish too, the poppy red

That grows on fields where valour led.

It seems to signal to the skies

That blood of heroes never dies,

But lends a lustre to the red

Of the flower that blooms above the dead

In Flanders' fields.

And now the torch and poppy red

Wear in honour of our dead.

Fear not that ye have died for naught

We've learned the lesson that ye taught

In Flanders' fields.

Through her tireless efforts, the red poppy became a symbol of remembrance in the United States and Europe for veterans, not only of the First World War, but of all military conflicts. Moina Belle Michael died in 1944.

Scott Catalogue USA: 977

Museum ID: 1980.2493.4065