Parrott Academy students dedicate art project to local veterans

Veterans Day Events at the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City
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Brandon Davis






Forty-five first graders surprised a local military museum this week with their paintings to celebrate Veterans Day. 

Students at Arendell Parrott Academy painted pictures of poppies inspired by the poem “In Flanders Fields” to display at the G.I. Joe’s Military Living History Museum and to thank local veterans for their service

APA elementary and middle school art teacher Samantha Rouse worked with her students on impressionism three weeks ago and decided to mix art with military during their next art project. 

“We decided to twist it around and make a Veterans Day impressionistic-style painting,” Rouse said. “We learned about the poppies, and they just took off with it. They were great.”

“In Flanders Field” was written by Canadian Lt. Col. John McCrae in 1915 during World War I. G.I. Joe’s director Eric Cantu said the poem shows a dedication of a country that was grateful for a war being over.

“Flanders fields is an aftermath of a war in which people went out to fields in which multiple bodies lay, some known, some unknown,” Cantu said. “That war was supposed to be the war to end all wars.”

Cantu said G.I. Joe’s donated Buddy Poppies from Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) to each of the students at APA to thank them for the paintings. VFW sells poppy pins to raise money for disabled veterans. 

“It means a lot to me to know that someone is helping our youth remember. It means a lot to me to know that somebody cares,” Cantu said. “We sent Buddy Poppies to each child, so they would have them to wear for Veterans Day.” 

Rouse, who has family members in the military, said she was happy to share her military-family background with her students. 

“They couldn’t believe that 5 million poppies are handmade each year. That kind of blew their minds a little bit,” Rouse said. “They were amazed by it at just the story and how important it was for the poppies and how the sales help veterans and things like that. I think the more that I can connect different subjects through art the better and well-rounded students are and they’re more well-rounded as a person. And I think getting their artwork out especially in local places like our military museum bridges that connection.

“I really enjoy that connection, and I hope students will kind of foster a love for that as well.”

“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 scarce heard amid the guns below,” McCrae’s poem reads. “We are the dead, short days ago. We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved, and now we lie, in Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: to you from failing hands we throw the torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who died, we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders fields.”