LISBON, N.D. - If you've donated a couple bucks for one of the small red poppies offered by North Dakota veterans' groups in the lead-up to this Memorial Day, chances are it was made by Alfred Steiger.
Steiger has made tens of thousands of red crepe paper poppies every year for the past 15 years, and the spry, upbeat 90-year-old Korean War-era vet is not about to stop.
"I enjoy it. I always say our veterans need help. That's how I look at it," Steiger said Thursday, May 24.
Using a walker that doubles as a chair, he chugs down the main hallway of the North Dakota Veterans Home in Lisbon toward the communal workshop, where he spends five to six hours a day at a workstation.
ADVERTISEMENT
There, he listens to polka, country-western and gospel music, and gets into the rhythm of making poppies.
Steiger cuts the green and black paper that colors the interior of the poppy, attaches the paper to a wire, then adds pre-cut red crepe paper to create the poppy bloom. A slip of paper for an "in-memoriam" message is attached to each artificial bloom.
His fingers move surely, though after hours of work, he says they get sore. For that, he keeps a bottle of hand cream nearby.
He's paid 5 cents a poppy - but he makes sure to take TV and coffee breaks, including trips to the golf course where he can get a free cup.
"I'm well-known here," Steiger said with a smile that rarely seems to leave his face.
ADVERTISEMENT
He does it "for the veterans' sake. All this goes to the American Legion for the donations," he said.
Steiger was born on a farm about 15 miles west of Hazelton, N.D., in late April 1928. He was "a farm boy," and his schooling ended after the sixth grade, he said.
Steiger was drafted into the Army in 1952, as part "of that Korean deal."
He joined the Company D, 7th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division in northern Japan, where the unit had been sent to reconstitute after fighting in the first two years of the Korean War. There, he served six months with a heavy weapons detachment and another year helping with radio and telephone communications.
Six months after Steiger got to Japan, the fighting was over, though he still ended up serving 18 months there.
"It was pretty cold up there. We was training on 6 feet of snow," Steiger said.
ADVERTISEMENT
Back in North Dakota, he later worked at St. John's Hospital in Fargo for 21 years, three years at the YMCA and another year at Sun Mechanical.
Mavis Goodroad, president of the American Legion Auxiliary for North Dakota, said the Legion was able to raise $20,000 last year selling Steiger's poppies. (The Veterans of Foreign Wars have also long offered "buddy poppies" as a fundraiser.)
The funds raised by Steiger's poppies support veterans' initiatives and the annual Girls State at the University of North Dakota, Goodroad said.
The poppies began appearing in widespread distribution in the U.S. after World War I as a remembrance of the flowers that bloomed on the battlefields of Europe in springtime. They are also an element in the famous poem "In Flanders Fields," written by Canadian officer John McCrae after a friend died in May 1915:
"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
ADVERTISEMENT
Scarce heard amid the guns below."
"It's a reminder of the blood shed in war, of the veterans who died for the freedom we have today," Goodroad said.
Steiger says he's had a few people volunteer to help, but they often soon drop out.
"I can't get anyone to help me," Steiger said. "They don't have the patience. That's what you need is patience."
Steiger is already working on next year's batch of poppies, with about 2,800 already finished in a workshop bin.
"I don't feel that old," Steiger said. "It's very important. It don't bother me. I figure I might as well keep doing it."
