Please support the Buddy Poppy program

For the past several years in the week leading up to Memorial Day, you would find a friendly and scruffy bearded Vietnam Veteran named Richard Dence selling Buddy Poppies at Joe’s Hardware. Richard, who walks with a cane, has dedicated his time to assist in raising funds for other veterans by selling Buddy Poppies.

The Buddy Poppy Program helps the Veterans of Foreign Wars live up to its motto, “to honor the dead by helping the living.” According to that organization, the red poppy grew abundantly over the graves of soldiers killed in France in World War I. Americans started selling paper vers...