The DEI Committee’s Veterans Day Celebrations

Staff and students wore camouflage to celebrate and honor Veterans on 11/9/2023.  We also wanted to thank our Veterans on staff, so the students made paper poppies to present to our Veterans with a thank you card from the BLC students and BLC DEI Committee.  The rest of the poppies made will be given to local VFWs with a thank you note.  The reason the students made the paper poppies is because the poppies are very symbolic for Veterans.  Poppies are the official Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) flower.  The red poppy is a symbol of both remembrance and hope for a peaceful future.  Poppies are worn as a show of support for the Armed Forces community.  They were inspired by the World War I poem "In Flanders Fields," in which the opening lines refer to poppies that were the first flowers to grow in the soil from soldiers' graves in the Flanders region of Belgium.  August 2022 marked 100 years since the VFW declared the poppy as the official VFW flower.  At VFW’s 1922 national convention in Seattle, Washington, the organization officially adopted the red flower.  In February 1924, VFW registered the name “Buddy Poppy” with the U.S. Patent Office. The term “Buddy”® was coined by the poppy makers, who, at the time, were disabled veterans. It was a tribute to the veterans who did not come home and those disabled or scarred for life.