Of the 618 regular members of Post 1031, already about 10 percent are veterans of the current conflicts. And, of those 60 young veterans, about 15 are women, Commander Jerry Heck said.
“A veteran is a veteran,” he said.
Today’s new veterans face a much different social climate today, and that’s having an effect on membership, according to Daniel Parker, deputy director of membership at VFW national headquarters in Kansas City.
“When these current conflict veterans come home, they’re getting a much warmer reception,” said Parker, himself a 30-year-old Iraq veteran.
Nationally, VFW membership stands at 1.4 million, down from its peak of 2 million in 1992.
The VFW, which has its roots in a Columbus organization formed in 1899, differs from the larger American Legion in that only men and women who served in combat — on land, air or sea — can join as regular members.
“A lot of people think of veterans organizations as just bars and places where old guys sit and drink, smoke and tell war stories,” Heck said. “They don’t see what we do in the community.”
Chris Gray, a 2008 graduate of Shawnee High School who just returned home from a year in Kandahar Province with the Army, joined Post 1031 as soon as he received his orders to Afghanistan.
Aside from the fact that the post is a good place to play darts, he cited one main reason for joining — brotherhood.
“If you need anything, those are the people you can count on. You have something very big in common,” said Gray, who is soon to report back to Fort Carson in Colorado.
Gray, 22, said that interest in joining the VFW is high among the men and women he’s serving with. “It’s always been people you can talk to,” he said.
Not everyone, however, has felt that way.
The idea of joining the VFW soon after leaving the service — or while still in uniform — was a foreign concept to many Vietnam War veterans.
“We weren’t welcomed when we came back,” said David Bragg, a Marine who served as an M60 machine gunner in Vietnam from 1967-68. Bragg is now commander of VFW Post 3660 on Columbus Avenue, which has 128 regular members.
“The Second World War veterans that ran the posts in those days didn’t like us,” he recalled. “We were labeled drug addicts.”
“There are a lot of Vietnam vets who never joined the VFW because they just felt so alienated,” Parker said.
Veterans of current conflicts are joining at a younger age, whereas many Vietnam vets are only now joining, decades after their war ended.
Convincing Vietnam veterans to join remains a high priority for the VFW on both the national and local levels.
“Those brothers and sisters,” Heck said. “We would love to see them and welcome them home.”
But the current generation of war veterans is perhaps most reminiscent of those who fought World War II.
Already, veterans of current conflicts are serving in all levels of VFW leadership, Parker said.
“We know they’re our future,” he said.
At Post 1031, leadership has been proactive, spending more than $2,000 the past six years, Heck said, to pay first-year dues of men and women still in uniform in hopes they’ll remain members in civilian life.
Their World War II counterparts joined the VFW in record numbers, doubling the size of the organization in 1946 alone, according to Parker.
Locally, those same World War II veterans “made the post what it is today,” Heck said.
But the fact remains, they’re a dying breed — it’s now believed 800 World War II veterans pass away daily.
“You aren’t going to replace that caliber of person. They aren’t called the greatest generation for nothing,” Heck said. “The young people we have coming up, they’re going to be the next great generation.”
Heck would like to see the day when no one is eligible to join VFW.
“That would mean there’s no more wars,” said Heck. “But such is the nature of the human race.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0352 or andrew.mcginn@coxinc.com
About the Author