Oh! You who sleep in “Flanders Fields,”
Sleep sweet – to rise anew!
We caught the Torch you threw
And, holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died.

We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor 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
We wear in honor of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We’ll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.

– “We Shall Keep the Faith”
Moina Michael, 1918

Learn more about “The Poppy Lady,” her poem, and how she helped support soldiers who served in World War I.

*Photo source;
Moina Michael memorial stamp (source)

*A Home and a Country is a private blog and is not affiliated with any particular institution or organization.

“Today let us, as Americans, honor the American fighting man. For it is he – the soldier, the sailor, the Airman, the Marine – who has fought to preserve freedom. It is his valor that has given renewed hope to the free world that by working together in discipline and faith our ideals of freedom will always prevail.”

– Admiral Forrest P. Sherman

*Color Guard of the U.S. 6th Infantry (source)

“No man is poor who has a godly mother.”

– Abraham Lincoln

*Picture source

“Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though the tasks set before us differ from the tasks set before our fathers who founded and preserved this Republic, the spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken and these problems faced, if our duty is to be well done, remains essentially unchanged. We know that self-government is difficult. We know that no people needs such high traits of character as that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely expressed will of the freemen who compose it. But we have faith that we shall not prove false to the memories of the men of the mighty past. They did their work, they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children and our children’s children. To do so we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln.”

– Theodore Roosevelt,
excerpt from his Inaugural Address, March 4th, 1905

*Picture source

“All I’m trying to say is, our world hinges on moral foundations. God has made it so! God has made the universe to be based on a moral law. So long as man disobeys it he is revolting against God. That’s what we need in the world today – people who will stand for right and goodness. It’s not enough to know the intricacies of zoology and biology. But we must know the intricacies of law. It is not enough to know that two and two makes four. But we’ve got to know somehow that it’s right to be honest and just with our brothers. It’s not enough to know all about our philosophical and mathematical disciplines. But we’ve got to know the simple disciplines, of being honest and loving and just with all humanity. If we don’t learn it, we will destroy ourselves, by the misuse of our own powers.”

– Martin Luther King Jr.,
“Rediscovering Lost Values”, 1954

*Stone of Hope statue, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial,
Washington, D.C. (source)

“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.”

– Benjamin Franklin

“As a Nation much blessed, we feel impelled at harvest time to follow the tradition handed down by our Pilgrim fathers of pausing from our labors for one day to render thanks to Almighty God for His bounties. Now that the year is drawing to a close, once again it is fitting that we incline our thoughts to His mercies and offer to Him our special prayers of gratitude.

“For the courage and vision of our forebears who settled a wilderness and founded a Nation; for the ‘blessings of liberty’ which the framers of our Constitution sought to secure for themselves and for their posterity, and which are so abundantly realized in our land today; for the unity of spirit which has made our country strong; and for the continuing faith under His guidance that has kept us a religious people with freedom of worship for all, we should kneel in humble thanksgiving. . .

“. . .[L]et all of us, in accordance with our hallowed custom, forgather in our respective places of worship and bow before God in contrition for our sins, in suppliance for wisdom in our striving for a better world, and in gratitude for the manifold blessings He has bestowed upon us and upon our fellow men. . .” 

– President Dwight D. Eisenhower,
excerpts from his Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, 1953

*Freedom from Want by Norman Rockwell, c. 1941-45 (source)

Home of the free, because of the brave.

Thank you, Veterans!

*A Home and a Country is a private blog and is not affiliated with any particular institution or organization.