American Legion popular stop for Bethel veterans

DUSTIN SOLBERG

April 18, 2008 at 10:31AM AKST

Even as veterans’ organizations have lost members nationally, a fledgling post in Bethel is growing so quickly that it leads the statewide organization in new members for 2008. Bethel’s George H. Hohman Jr. American Legion Post 10 has grown to 58 members since it reorganized 3-1/2 years ago.

The post’s commander, Sam Shields, says he understands the national veterans’ organization may seem outdated to today’s 20-something veterans. The ranks of the veterans’ organization are still comprised mostly of veterans who marched through boot camp before many Persian Gulf era veterans were even born.

Yet Bethel’s American Legion post has plans for teleconference meetings for its far-flung Delta membership, initiated a banquet for returning soldiers and developed a new veteran’s cemetery.

"We’re veterans helping veterans. We need to seek these soldiers out," said Shields, a retired boot camp drill sergeant. "You have to let them in whether you like their music or not. They’re veterans."

The Bethel American Legion post meets once a month in a conference room in the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, and fewer than a dozen attend its monthly meetings. But the group proceeds with its plans for the gaming license that will allow it to enter Bethel’s competitive nonprofit rippies market. It hopes to soon have a home of its own, in a rented room at the city-owned Log Cabin.

Yet as Bethel’s American Legion grows, the local Veterans of Foreign Wars seems to be succumbing to the same forces that have posts nationwide desperate for new members.

American Legion draws its members from veterans who served in wartime, and Veterans of Foreign Wars members have served in a war zone. The VFW operates a club in Bethel with widescreen television, pool tables, a sauna and a jukebox with songs from an earlier era.

Bethel VFW post commander Buck Bukowski said these long-time perks don’t attract young veterans anymore – the post has just two or three recent sign-ons. Both organizations still help veterans navigate the sometimes byzantine bureaucracies designed to help them.

Like any number of clubs and fraternal organizations, the Veterans of Foreign Wars is losing membership. He blames this on the glaring differences between generations of veterans.

"It’s another generation. It’s not going to hang around the VFW for the weekend. It’s a space-age and computer generation, where, in the older days, ‘Let’s go down to the VFW for an evening.’ It’s just more difficult to get the young crowd in. The young crowd wants to do young crowd stuff," he said.

And while many VFW posts operate taverns that become social hubs, that’s not an option in damp Bethel, where alcohol is not sold legally.

"We don’t even have that to entice them in," he said.

Many of the region’s veterans live outside of Bethel, in five dozen villages spread across this vast stretch of Southwest Alaska.

"It’s pretty tough to offer benefits to somebody that lives 150 miles from the nearest VFW post," he said.

Other VFW benefits that come with $35 annual dues – waived for veterans recently returned from war zones – include a subscription to VFW magazine, pet insurance, a condo and ocean cruise program and health insurance. But none of these entice new members, either.

"It’s hard for the young veteran because he’s nine feet tall and bulletproof so he doesn’t need the insurance we offer," he said.

Marketing to youth

If the VFW and American Legion are unable to market themselves to a younger corps of veterans as entertainment destinations, they do retain their call to community service.

"They are there to help their community," Buck said of the Bethel Post 10041 VFW members.

Each VFW meeting – often attended by only a handful of Vietnam-era vets – includes a question still central to the mission to "honor the dead by helping the living" more than 100 years after its founding.

"We ask, ‘Is there a comrade or a friend of a comrade in distress?’ Every meeting we ask that," Bukowksi said. "It’s not a bunch of old warriors sitting at the bar."

But when veterans gather, stories are traded: Shrapnel. Buddies lost. Bravado.

"We tell war stories. We show scars. Always that happens," Shields said.

Shields, for one, has a few to tell. After 16 years in the Army, his injuries had him walking with a cane. Today, he’s replaced the cane with a daily retinue of pills and a monthly trip to the Veterans’ Administration hospital.

The former drill sergeant says he knew many of his fellow veterans long before he moved to Bethel from his native Mississippi in the 1990s. He knew them in boot camp, where he led many Alaska Yup’ik soldiers through rote drills in sultry gulf heat.

"Those guys would come in and shoot the hell out of everything. It wasn’t a myth. They could shoot. They couldn’t run too fast, but they could shoot. But they never quit. Never quit," he said.

Buck said he’s disappointed that he didn’t attract more than just a couple new members from the region’s veterans newly returned from Kuwait and Iraq. But he has another plan: He’ll mail an application form to every new vet with an invitation for a year of free membership.

"Then we’ll see what comes back," he said.

The nation’s two veterans organizations are comprised solely of brothers and sisters in arms, but that doesn’t mean they don’t feel a rivalry for members.

"I think you’re always going to have that sense of competition. They both do the same thing," said Jim Pisa, state commander for the American Legion in Alaska.

Shields said there’s a difference between the upstart organization he founded and the Bethel VFW, a long-established institution.

Until the end of June, veterans in Alaska eligible for membership in the American Legion can join or re-instate for the special rate of $10.

Shields said he expects his new membership – most of whom signed up at February’s banquet – to renew their memberships.

"Ninety percent of them will be there. This is a hard place here," he said. "There’s really nothing here, but they’re still doing it."

Dustin Solberg can be reached at (907) 348-2480 or toll free at (800) 770-9830, ext. 480.