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Membership drive brings national, state figures to Greencastle Legion Post
There wasn’t a Legionburger in sight or a philanthropic project in the works, yet Greencastle American Legion Post 58 was quite the busy place Sunday morning.
Including National Vice Commander Jerry Wilson of Harrison, Ohio, 16 members of the Legion’s Membership Caravan were making their 10th stop in five days when the tour bus pulled into the Indianapolis Road post for its first of three visits to Hoosier posts on Sunday. Crawfordsville and Carmel were to follow.
Local Legion Commander Rod Gaffney and some 25 local members welcomed the contingent with Gaffney calling the Greencastle unit “a fun post.”
“We’re proud of the work we do here,” Gaffney added, “and humbled by the work we get to do.”
That’s probably a good part of the reason that 85 percent of veterans eligible to be Greencastle Legion members have already signed up. A handful more did so Sunday.
Nationally, the membership drive has a goal of getting 80 percent of eligible veterans signed up.
“Membership is key, our life blood,” Deputy Indiana State Commander Mark Gullion of Post 500, Indianapolis, said. “Increasing our membership will help us keep our programs afloat.”
Rose Ann Dzieglowicz, deputy state president of the American Legion Auxiliary, noted that ”when we go to lobby in Congress, those numbers matter.”
Wilson noted that there are 25 million veterans living in the United States, yet only 1.7 million have signed up for the American Legion.
“Because of that,” he said, “Congress says, ‘How interested are they that they don’t sign up?’”
Most congressmen are no longer veterans, Wilson added, “and don’t understand what it means to be a veteran.”
Wilson, a Hoosier native from Milan, shared a “brave and noble” tale of the five Sullivan brothers of Waterloo, Iowa, who were all killed on Nov. 13, 1942 when the light cruiser USS Juneau was sunk at the Battle of Guadalcanal during World War II.
He spoke of the “unimaginable grief,” parents Thomas and Alleta Sullivan must have felt when Navy representatives showed up at their front door to deliver the tragic news.
Their father hadn’t missed a day of work as a freight conductor on the Illinois Central Railroad in 35 years, Wilson said, but suggested to his wife he probably needed to stay home that day.
“She told him, ‘Your boys would want you to go,” Wilson said, “you help ship goods that help them fight the war.’”
Wilson, who said he didn’t serve in Vietnam but was a drill instructor during the period, suffered 40 percent hearing loss disability from activity on the rifle range.
“Go apply,” he urged of local vets uncertain if their ailments are service-related. “You never know.”
Wilson says he continues to have back pain and wonders if it could be the result of jumping out of airplanes in training.
“I have a bad back,” he continued, “and never thought I needed to (apply for veterans’ benefits), but when I get back home, I’m going to apply.”
Wilson said he hears from other vets all the time who jokingly asked why he would jump out of a “perfectly good airplane.”
“Obviously,” he responds, “you’ve never seen most of them ...”