After decades of service, the Logan Memorial Post 3528 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Quincy will be closing its doors for good, possibly as soon as later this month.
Citing dwindling membership numbers, VFW Post 3528 will offer to surrender its charter at a meeting with the state and district VFW commanders on July 12. Long-time member of the Post and Vietnam veteran Denny Brown spoke in a voice tinged with sadness when he reported Saturday that the Post will cease to exist.
“We just don’t have the…active membership to keep things going,” Brown said. “We’re all getting tired and we’re getting older and that’s the reason that we’re doing this.”
Denny Brown talks about the closing of Logan Memorial Post 3528
The numbers back Brown up. In 1941, the year that the United States entered World War II, the population of the USA was about 133,000,000. By the end of the war in 1945, approximately 1.6 million Americans were serving in the Armed Services, representing over 10 percent of the population, all of whom would be eligible to join veteran’s organizations such as the VFW. With no conscription since the 1970s, the percentage of eligible veterans has dropped considerably in the past 40 years.
(Pictured above left: Denny Brown, standing, Bob Beatty, left, and Tina Purtee)
But the news of the closing is not all bad.
The building that housed Post 3528 was sold by the VFW to the Village of Quincy roughly 10 years ago. A small part of that money was used for operating costs over the past decade; the rest has been sitting in a Certificate of Deposit.
Until Saturday.
Following a unanimous vote, members offered the money to the Riverside EMS and the Quincy/Miami Township EMS. Chief Tina Purtee of the Miami Township EMS and Assistant Chief Bob Beatty of the Riverside EMS were on hand Saturday to accept the checks, and both were slightly stunned when Brown handed over checks of slightly over $12,500 apiece.
“We would have been happy with a couple of hundred dollars,” Purtee said. “This is amazing.”
Brown was quick to point out that current VFW members can transfer their membership to any of the other posts, the closest being Bellefontaine and Sidney. The other western Logan County veteran’s organization – American Legion Miami Valley Post 652 – remains open and operational.
