Poppy Ceremony 2025
Monday May 26, outside the Iowa Building
on East 56th Street in Hyde Park, Chicago.
Collages and the Memory Board outside the Iowa Building, and
volunteer Marion Fletcher checking in attendees
as they arrive.
(above) Our Memory Board with names and sometimes images of our fallen heroes.
(right) Barbara Jean Walsh starts the Poppy Ceremony with a prayer that she wrote for the occasion.
(left) Commander Thompson along with two other representatives from
the American Legion.
(right) Commander Frank B. Thompson III welcomes other veterans and members of the American Legion.
(above) Volunteers Tabitha Daboni and Matt King join the Ceremony after conducting the "Quiet Vigil," which took place from 8 to 9 am at Promontory Point.
Morning of May 26, 2025, what a lovely setting for our community remembrance ceremony.
(left) Barbara Jean Walsh leading the group in reading "In Flanders Fields"
by John McCrae:
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.