Why were people making poppies at WWI Museum’s Veterans Day observance?

While solemn Veterans Day remembrance ceremonies were taking place at the National WWI Museum and Memorial on Tuesday, people were also there observing the holiday by making replicas of poppies.

The museum is one of the nation’s epicenters of Veterans Day observances. After all, it was the end of the Great War that prompted the establishment of the holiday, sort of.

WWI came to an end in 1918 on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. The day became known as Armistice Day. Shortly after the end of WWII when people realized that WWI wasn’t the “war to end all wars,” the day started to be referred to as National Veterans Day to honor all veterans according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Congress recognized the change in 1954 and Veterans Day became the name of the holiday we now celebrate on November 11.

So why are poppies part of remembering veterans on Veterans Day?

According to the explanation on the museum’s website, the use of poppies has its origins in a poem that was penned by a Canadian physician who had served as a field surgeon in Belgium during the Great War. Looking out across tattered battlefields and over the fresh graves of fallen soldiers he noticed how the poppies blooming there stood in stark contrast to the grim realities of war. Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae included the poppies in his poem “In Flanders Fields” and cemented the image of the flowers in the hearts and minds of the people in many countries as a symbol of hope and a reminder of the horrific and wasteful toll of the war.

The poppy became such a recognizable symbol for remembrance observances that veterans’ groups started selling paper replicas of the flowers to raise money for veterans’ causes. The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), a national organization based in Kansas City still makes and distributes poppies to bring awareness to veterans’ issues and to help raise funds to support their programs.

Here are images from the event Tuesday at the National WWI Museum and Memorial.