Post 142 American Legion News Sterling McClellan Post 142 ~ 171 SW 2nd Street ~ Pompano Beach, FL 33060 ~ 954-942-2448 Web Site: www.alpost142.com ~ E-mail: legion@alpost142.com November 2012 Special Veterans Day Edition ion Commanders Report Thanks to all the Early Birds that came for the Early Bird Dinner. This year our Early Bird prize winner is Earl Fluellen of Ft. Lauderdale. It pays to get those renewals in early. We have made our 1st and 2ndmembership goals and are now looking to meet our next goal. Remember that the American Legion is only as strong as it s membership. We are proud Veteran s that continue to serve our country and our community. It is now November and it will be a busy month. We have the Marine Corps Birthday on the 10 th, our Veterans Day ceremony at 11am on the 11 th, Blood Drive on the 17th and our Thanksgiving Dinner for our members on the 22 nd coming up. This month we will also start our Toys for Tots drive. The boxes are in the Lounge. Let s do as well or better than we did last year. In this issue you will see the proclamation signed by President Obama commemorating the 50 th anniversary of the Vietnam War. There is a special insert for Veterans Day included in this newsletter. Altough this insert is based on Vietnam we will never forget the men and women that fought for our freedom in other wars and conflicts and I m sure the stories are the same. World War I, World War II, Korea, Lebanon/Granada, Panama, and the Gulf War/War on Terrorism. For God and Country, George Rafajko HAPPY 237 TH BIRTHDAY SEMPER FI MARINES 1st Vice Commanders Report On behalf of Post 142, thank you to those that have sent in your renewals on time. Remember that 2012 is coming to an end next month and you will need to have your 2013 card to enter the Post. The new door cards will also be coming out January 1 st and you must show your new 2013 card to receive the new door card. So let s get those renewals in before the end of the year. We have achieved our first and second goal and as of this writing we are currently at 66%. We still need to get the rest of these renewals in as soon as possible so that we can make our next goal of 75% by December 5th. You can still renew by mailing the form back to the Post, bring it by the Post or you can renew on line at www.legion.org/renew.
Breakfast Saturday & Sunday 9am -11am November Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Post hours: Open at 9am 1 2 3 Breakfast 7 Days a week ~ Close at 10:30pm Monday Legion/Auxiliary BBQ Ribs General Meeting Full Rack 13.00 Thursday, 7pm ½ Rack 9.00 12-2 &5:30 11pm Friday & Saturday, 7:30pm 8pm on Sunday Karaoke 6 10pm Gentlemen!! No tank tops or sleeveless shirts after 6pm 4 Breakfast Daylight Saving Ends Fall Back 11 Breakfast 12 Veterans Day 11am Ceremony 18 Breakfast 25 Breakfast 5 6 Bar Pizza 5-8pm Auxiliary Bingo 7pm 5:30 7:30pm Vote Today 13 Bar Pizza 5-8pm Auxiliary Bingo 7pm 5:30 7:30pm NYFD Meeting Special Liver & Onions 19 20 Bar Pizza 5-8pm Auxiliary Bingo 7pm 5:30 7:30pm 26 27 Bar Pizza 5-8pm Auxiliary Bingo 7pm 5:30 7:30pm 7 Chicken Parm. w/linguini 10.00 w/fries 8.00 ALR Birthday Dinner 14 London Broil Dinner 10.00 Or w/fries 9.00 21 Spaghetti and Meatballs 10.00 Or w/fries 9.00 28 Meat Loaf Dinner 10.00 Or w/fries 9.00 Legion/Auxiliary Executive Committee 6pm 8 SAL General meeting 7pm 15 Marine Corps League meeting 7:30pm 22 Thanksgiving Dinner 3pm 29 Legion Riders Meeting 7pm Blood Drive Fried Fish or 10.00 Thunderhead 9 NY Strip Dinner 13.00 Fried Fish or 10.00 Entertainment 16 Prime Rib Dinner 14.00 Fried Fish or 10.00 Entertainment 23 Rib Eye Steak Dinner 13.00 Fried Fish or 10.00 Entertainment 30 Surf & Turf Sirloin Steak & Shrimp 13.00 Fried Fish or 10.00 Entertainment Lunch Monday Saturday 11:30 am 2pm 10 Breakfast 12-2 &5:30 7:30pm Karaoke 6 10pm USMC B-Day 17 Breakfast 12-2 &5:30 7:30pm Karaoke 6 10pm Blood Drive 11 4:30pm 24 Breakfast 12-2 &5:30 7:30pm Karaoke 6 10pm Join us in giving the gift of life, Saturday, November 17, 2012 from 11am to 4:30pm Free double cheeseburger or hotdog and t-shirt for all donors
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"WHAT IS A VIETNAM VETERAN?" A college student posted a request on an internet newsgroup asking for personal narratives from the likes of us addressing the question: "What is a Vietnam Veteran?" This is what I wrote back: Vietnam veterans are men and women. We are dead or alive, whole or maimed, sane or haunted. We grew from our experiences or we were destroyed by them or we struggle to find some place in between. We lived through hell or we had a pleasant, if scary, adventure. We were Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Red Cross, and civilians of all sorts. Some of us enlisted to fight for God and Country, and some were drafted. Some were gung-ho, and some went kicking and screaming. Like veterans of all wars, we lived a tad bit--or a great bit--closer to death than most people like to think about. If Vietnam vets differ from others, perhaps it is primarily in the fact that many of us never saw the enemy or recognized him or her. We heard gunfire and mortar fire but rarely looked into enemy eyes. Those who did, like folks who encounter close combat anywhere and anytime, are often haunted for life by those eyes, those sounds, those electric fears that ran between ourselves, our enemies, and the likelihood of death for one of us. Or we get hard, calloused, and tough. All in a day's work. Life's a bitch then you die. But most of us remember and get twitchy, worried, and sad. We are crazies dressed in cammo, wide-eyed, wary, homeless, and drunk. We are Brooks Brothers suit wearers, doing deals downtown. We are housewives, grandmothers, and church deacons. We are college professors engaged in the rational pursuit of the truth about the history or politics or culture of the Vietnam experience. And we are sleepless. Often sleepless. We pushed paper; we pushed shovels. We drove jeeps, operated bulldozers, built bridges; we toted machine guns through dense brush, deep paddy, and thorn scrub. We lived on buffalo milk, fish heads and rice, or C-rations. Or steaks and Budweiser. We did our time in high mountains drenched by endless monsoon rains or on the dry plains or on muddy rivers or at the most beautiful beaches in the world. We wore berets, bandanas, flop hats, and steel pots. Flak jackets, canvas, rash and rot. We ate chlorine tablets and got malaria anyway. We got shots constantly but have diseases nobody can diagnose. We spent our nights on cots or shivering in foxholes filled with waist-high water or lying still on cold wet ground, our eyes imagining Charlie behind every bamboo blade. Or we slept in hotel beds in Saigon or barracks in Thailand or in cramped ships' berths at sea. We feared we would die or we feared we would kill. We simply feared, and often we still do. We hate the war or believe it was the best thing that ever happened to us. We blame Uncle Sam or Uncle Ho and their minions and secretaries and apologists for every wart or cough or tic of an eye. We wonder if Agent Orange got us. Mostly--and this I believe with all my heart--mostly, we wish we had not been so alone. Some of us went with units; but many, probably most of us, were civilians one day, jerked up out of "the world," shaved, barked at, insulted, humiliated, de-egotized and taught to kill, to fix radios, to drive trucks. We went, put in our time, and were equally ungraciously plucked out of the morass and placed back in the real world. But now we smoked dope, shot skag, or drank heavily. Our wives or husbands seemed distant and strange. Our friends wanted to know if we shot anybody.
And life went on, had been going on, as if we hadn't been there, as if Vietnam was a topic of political conversation or college protest or news copy, not a matter of life and death for tens of thousands. Vietnam vets are people just like you. We served our country, proudly or reluctantly or ambivalently. What makes us different--what makes us Vietnam vets--is something we understand, but we are afraid nobody else will. Vietnam veterans are white, black, beige and shades of gray; but in comparison with our numbers in the "real world," we were more likely black. Our ancestors came from Africa, from Europe, and China. Or they crossed the Bering Sea Land Bridge in the last Ice Age and formed the nations of American Indians, built pyramids in Mexico, or farmed acres of corn on the banks of Chesapeake Bay. We had names like Rodriguez and Stein and Smith and Kowalski. We were Americans, Australians, Canadians, and Koreans; most Vietnam veterans are Vietnamese. We were farmers, students, mechanics, steelworkers, nurses, and priests when the call came that changed us all forever. We had dreams and plans, and they all had to change...or wait. We were daughters and sons, lovers and poets, beatniks and philosophers, convicts and lawyers. We were rich and poor but mostly poor. We were educated or not, mostly not. We grew up in slums, in shacks, in duplexes, and bungalows, houseboats, hooch s and ranches. We were cowards and heroes. Sometimes we were cowards one moment and heroes the next. Many of us have never seen Vietnam. We waited at home for those we loved. And for some of us, our worst fears were realized. For others, our loved ones came back but never would be the same. We came home and marched in protest marches, sucked in tear gas, and shrieked our anger and horror for all to hear. Or we sat alone in small rooms, in VA hospital wards, in places where only the crazy ever go. We are Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, and Confucians and Buddhists and Atheists--though as usually is the case, even the atheists among us sometimes prayed to get out of there alive. We are hungry, and we are sated, full of life or clinging to death. We are injured, and we are curers, despairing and hopeful, loved or lost. We got too old too quickly, but some of us have never grown up. We want disparately to go back, to heal wounds and revisit the sites of our horror. Or we want never to see that place again, to bury it, its memories, its meaning. We want to forget, and we wish we could remember. Despite our differences, we have so much in common. There are few of us who don't know how to cry, though we often do it alone when nobody will ask "what's wrong?" We're afraid we might have to answer. So, if you want to know what a Vietnam veteran is, get in your car and drive to Washington. Go to the Wall. It's going to be Veterans Day weekend. There will be hundreds there...no, thousands. Watch them. Listen to them. I'll be there. Come touch the Wall with us. Rejoice a bit. Cry a bit. No, cry a lot. I will. I'm a Vietnam Veteran; and, after 30 years, I think I am beginning to understand what that means. Dan Mouer, Viet Nam Veteran
Post Officers 2012 2013 Commander George Rafajko..954-873-6462 1 st Vice Commander John McDonough...954-646-3198 2 nd Vice Commander Open Finance Officer Gary Brietling.954-234-4404 Adjutant Rick Davitt..954-805-4593 Chaplin Lewis Angwin..954-782-6333 Historian Paul Stein Sergeant at Arms- Tommy Thomas.....954-360-0894 Executive Committee: Larry Henderson.954-234-0538 Ron Boulay.....954-242-1360 Steve Klosz..954-261-2066 John Silva.954-804-4709 Fred DeJacma 954-907-2421 Unit 142 Officers for 2012-2013 President, Reggie Hammes..954-729-5503 1 st Vice, Denice Grinis....H 954-788-3188 C 754-264-4388 2 nd Vice, Demetria Grieve.... 954-445-8256 Chaplain, Marion Broadhead....954-427-0467 Secretary, Virginia Stein.....954-344-9197 Treasurer, Barbara Chapman-Thomas H 954-360-0894 C 954-650-3663 Historian, Elaine Rafajko......954-661-1153 Sgt-at- Arms, Lenore Stribling.....954-805-4594 Asst. Sgt-at-Arms, Brittney Chase Executive Committee: Susan Connell-Brown Barbara Branigan Kim Chase November Meetings Thursday, Nov. 1, Legion and Auxiliary General Meeting 7pm Thursday, Nov. 1, Legion and Auxiliary Executive Board Meeting 6pm Thursday, Nov. 8, SAL General Meeting 7pm Thursday, Nov. 15, Marine Corps League General Meeting 7:30pm No Fleet Reserve Meetings till January 25, 7pm Thursday, Nov. 29, ALR General Meeting 7pm Please attend your meetings. Your voice will be heard and might make a difference. Thanksgiving Dinner For all our Post 142 members Thursday, Nov. 22, 3pm Bring a covered dish and join your Legion family Please donate a New, unwrapped toy. The Marine Corps Reserve will pick them up and distribute these toys to families in need. Let s make sure that all children have a Merry Christmas On Monday, November 12, 2012 from 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., Golden Corral will be giving out Veterans Day free meals to any person who has ever served in the U.S. military or is on current active duty. All Golden Corral locations will be participating and no identification is required.
Post 142 Booster Club 2012 2013 Thanks again to all of the members, friends and guests that continue to donate to our Booster Club. Because of you we are able to keep our Post home in the best possible order. Let s keep up the good work. Bill & Lois Ellis 1/13 Philip Patlis 2/13 Henry & Carol Kesper 10/13 Lawrence & Betty Williams 12/12 Hambone 1/13 Paul & Virginia Stein 11/12 Lou Post 1/13 Bud Bugsy Moore 11/12 Edward Weise 8/13 Gary & Arlette Spaniak 12/12 Novice Balazs 12/12 Robert Burke 3/13 Bob Shelly 1/13 Ann & Sam Gelber 3/13 Fred & Connie DeJacma 5/13 Michael Petrofske 9/13 Edwin Wheeler 2/13 Robin Rollins 10/13 Jack Brill 10/13 L. Alan Westphal 11/12 Rosemarie Ackerlund 11/12 Tom & Corinne O Brien 1/13 Jim & Georgianne Perez 1/13 Russell Moore 1/14 Ron Emery 2/13 Rudy Marinacci 2/13 Jimmy Newell 2/13 Artie & Marti Stroub 2/13 Arlene Dion 5/13 Robert Burke 3/13 Don & Loretta Hartley 11/13 Scruffy in Honor of George & Elaine Rafajko 11/12 Scruffy in Memory of Robert W. Appleton 11/12 Scruffy in Memory of Dick Sanborn 11/12 Scruffy in Memory of Sandy Wheeler 11/12 Scruffy in Memory of Gail Greve 11/12 Scruffy in Memory of Ed & Josh Pitcher 11/12 L. Alan Westphal in Memory of Harold Iden 11/12 L. Alan Westphal in Memory of Kevin Jones 11/12 Rosemarie Ackerlund in Memory of Joseph Menapace 11/12 Marion Broadhead in memory of Walter Broadhead 10/13 Sally Fischer in Memory of Loving Husband Hank Fischer 1/13 Bonnie Hatt in Memory of Roland Beaulieu 11/12 Zane Gramenidis in Memory of Roland Beaulieu 11/12 Jack Wisco in Memory of Roland Beaulieu 11/12 Patricia Annattone in Memory of Roland Beaulieu 11/12 Cecile Locke in Memory of Roland Beaulieu 11/12 Rollande Garneau in Memory of Roland Beaulieu 11/12 George Bierwirth in Memory of Glen Cavanagh, Past Cmdr 11/12 In Memory of Eileen Thomson from Matt & Chris Ferrara 12/12 In Honor of Dale Stayman from Rattlesnake Ron 12/12 Bill & Lois Ellis in Memory of Earl and Eleanor Ellis 1/13 Jack & Theresa Schultz in Memory of Richard Pitcher 1/13 Rosemarie Ackerlund in Memory of Dale Stayman 2/13 In Memory of Joe Rice, You re Loving Widow, Joanne 2/13 In Memory of Bob Siravo, USMC, from his wife Carolyn 2/13 Peggy Bamber & Gail Drynan in Memory of Mel Maxwell 3/13 Edward Weise in Memory of CSM Richard Sills 3/13 Nina Kaposi in Memory of Raymond J. Kaposi 3/13 In Memory of Marti Stroub from Leo & Norma Lee 10/13 In Memory of Marti Stroub from Joanne & Joe Walsh 10/13 In Memory of Marti Stroub from your Loving Husband, Artie 10/13 In Memory of Marti Stroub from your Legion Family 11/13 Christmas Dinner for all our Post 142 members Christmas Day at 3pm Bring a covered dish and join your Legion Family POST EVERLASTING Robert Pieski Charlie Dibble
American Legion Riders Cycle Up Corner Future Events: Nov. 7: ALR Post 142 birthday dinner Nov. 18: American Legion Riders Post 142 Turkey Run and will be leaving our Post 142 at approximately 11:00 a.m. to deliver 8 10 turkeys. This year there will be an emphasis in recognizing veterans who served in World War II, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and current military. We are working with our veterans service office on Commercial Blvd. and the satellite base on 10 th Street, Deerfield Beach, Florida. Also, we are working with our Post 142 Auxiliary who have committed to support us in providing supplementary supplies. We are also proud to support our Auxiliary for the Halloween and Xmas Party for the local children from our American Legion and community. Don t forget to purchase your raffle tickets for our holiday television giveaway. The television is a great special Christmas gift for your family or friends. The draw will be held at the Commander s Christmas party in December. Tickets will sell for $5.00 each or 6 for $25.00. Welcome back from vacation our Director, Ron Boulay, American Legion Riders Post 142. WE WANT TO REMIND ALL AMERICAN LEGION RIDERS TO P ATTEND YOUR POST 142 AUXILIARY; SAL; AND GENERAL MEETINGS IN ORDER TO REPRESENT US, AND BE ACTIVELY INVOLVED, SUPPORTIVE, AND LEND A HELPING HAND AND BEING INSTRUMENTAL WITH OUR AMERICAN LEGION POST. Riding wheels up. Ron Boulay, Director Jeff Munsell, Assistant Director SAL SALUTE The Sons of the American Legion Post 142 are moving along progressively and are ahead of their membership commitments for this year. We are happy to announce that we have supported our designated charities this year to the tune of $200.00 per charity which doubles our commitment from the previous year. We are undertaking an effort to support a fundraiser event for the BSO motor cycle patrolman from Pompano Beach and the family members. We expect all of the SAL members to participate in this event as it will be truly to recognize one of our law enforcement officers who paid the ultimate price for his service to our community. We have been honored to support the Post 142 Auxiliary and our Legion members during the past year. Please remember your commitment to maintain your memberships and support for the SAL movement and we continue to strive for your membership renewals so please do so now. Don t forget to join us for our meeting held every second Thursday of the month. I humbly remain, Jeffrey Munsell Commander (Salamander)
Auxiliary President's Message Thank you ladies for sending in your dues. Our membership is at 56% at this time, we have the top report in the 9th District. Everyone is busy working on their special programs. The children s Halloween Party was a great success, thank you everyone who helped to make this a great time for all the children. Our children's Christmas Party will be on December 9 the sign-up sheet is in the lounge. Demi Grieve is chairman she needs deserts for the children and some Santa's Helpers. See Demi to volunteer. Thanksgiving Dinner will be held at the Post at 3:00 PM and the signup sheet will be in the lounge. Please bring a side dish and/or desert. Hello Ladies we have passed the 50% mark for membership so far. Please take a moment and send yours in if you haven t already. For those of you that don t have family down here in paradise, the Post will host a dinner on Thanksgiving Day for members who would like to join us. It s time to think of all those who are less fortunate than us. The holidays are especially hard for them. Let s see what we can do this year. Our Holiday party for the children is being held early, on December 9, 2012. Please try to help with this party by donating candy, cupcakes, etc. We also need people to help with the little ones. Contact one of the officers if you would like to help. We are planning a Bake Sale on December 15 from 10-2 we need donations of baked goods and volunteers to help. We have changed the Executive Meeting from the 3rd Thursday of the month to 6:00 PM on the 1st Thursday of the month just before the General Meeting. Come and join us. The meetings are usually over by 8:00. For God and Country Reggie Hammes Service not Self Denice Grinis 1 st Vice President/Membership Chair Your Vote Does Count Tuesday, November 6 You earned that right, Get out and Vote Post 142 Veterans Day Ceremony Sunday, November 11 11am