AT THE TIME, IT WAS SORT OF EMBARRASSING, BUT NOW IT MAKES FOR A FOND MEMORY:  At the age of 11 or so, I was “Miss Poppy” of Northern Virginia.  It meant that I dressed in a white dress decorated with crepe paper poppies (actually my Confirmation dress re-tooled for Memorial Day and other patriotic holidays).  My job was to go to American Legion Posts in the area where I would recite John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields.”  I could also recite “America’s Answer.”

My favorite lines from the latter are:

Fear not that ye have died for naught;
The torch ye threw to us we caught,
Ten million hands will hold it high,
And freedom’s light shall never die!
We’ve learned the lesson that ye taught
In Flanders’ fields.

I don’t think I was the world’s best (or even Northern Virginia’s best) poetry reciter at the time.  But the dress and the little green shoes and hat were cute.