What do you do with a Legion post that is losing its members?

It is not that the newer veterans are not coming but the Legion, along with too many other posts across the country, are not asking them.

When

New service organizations had to form a few years after Afghanistan was invaded, that should have caused alarm bells to go off in every established post. There would have been no need of them had the needs of the veterans been met by a welcoming neighborhood post showing they cared enough to know what the need was.

Young families wouldn't mind hanging around with people old enough to be grandparents if they knew they were cared about. Since we live in a time where families are no longer staying in their home towns they miss having someone older around to spoil them emotionally. Home could have been where the post was but they wanted to stay the same way they had been while the newer veterans needed oh so much more.

They needed accessibility to online resources but they also needed something the Legion was in a perfect position to deliver on. Experience. They would be able to just be an example of surviving even after what they went through in wars now reported in history books instead of newspapers. Wives could have helped new wives know that their marriages are not hopeless when love is there and support is available. There is so much they could have been doing but maybe its a case of no one ever giving them advice, or showing them how, or in some cases, just doing if for them. The age of these commanders does play into what was not being done and it's easy to jump to the conclusion they simply didn't know how to do any of it.

What do you do with a Legion post that is losing its members?

Nov, 17-2009 4:05 pm

By JACKIE HANUSEY
Staff Writer
LINWOOD – Linwood American Legion Post 353 sits at 23 Elm Ave., old and in disrepair.

The building’s yellow paint is peeling; the once-red door faded. From the outside, the curtains look worn and moth-eaten.

Birds live in the roof, and the portico over the front porch is rotted and unstable, according to City Councilman Tim Tighe. Sometimes, the grass is unkempt.

Tighe said the city has been wrestling with what to do about the building for several years.

He said it is a shame that the building needs so much work. Owned by the American Legion, it was constructed in 1900. It is on an undersized lot, which would make it hard to sell.

But perhaps the biggest problem to overcome is not the age of the building, but its membership.

“It’s a touchy situation. No one has any intentions of hurting the veterans,” Tighe said. “We don’t understand where the younger veterans are.”
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