POST 24 NEWS AND VIEWS FEBRUARY 2009 ISSUE

Post Commander, Frank Molina
Auxiliary President, Deirdre Nye
SAL Commander, Kim Scott
ALR President, Michael Smith
Lead Bartender, Jeff Sweet
Bingo Chairman, Barb Klein
Adjutant, Don Aiton
Editor, Karen Goodman

CALENDAR OF EVENTS
Meetings
Auxiliary Meeting, February 4, 6:30p
Marine Corps League, February 9, 7p
E-Board Meeting, February 11, 7p
ALR Meeting, February 14, 9a
SAL Meeting, February 18, 6:30p
Post Meeting, February 25, 7p

Pot Luck, Monday, February 2, 6:30pm - Bring a dish to share. This month’s theme is Polish.

Pool Night, Every Tuesday @ 6:30p. Happy hour drink prices for all players. The entry fee is $5. Cafe Legionnaire is open and will serve pool night specials.

Karaoke, Every Thursday @5:30p. And it’s Taco Night too!!!

Bingo, Every Friday, Doors Open @5p, Early Birds @6:30p, Regular Games @7p. Enjoy Café Legionnaire’s Friday Fish!

Play SLINGO, Saturday 3-5p, sponsored by the SAL and Sunday 3-5p, sponsored by the Ladies Auxiliary! SLINGO is a fast paced casino style game, played at the bar. You can smoke, drink, watch the game, choose your favorites tunes on the jukebox or order a meal while you play.

Café Legionnaire is open Tuesday, 6-8p, Wednesday thru Friday, 11a - 8p, Saturday, 9a – 8p (Breakfast 9 – 11a) and Sunday 2-6p.

The Post will be hosting a Valentine’s Day party on February 14 and a Mardi Gras Party on February 21. Check the bulletin boards for details. Music by Joe and Marilyn will be provided on both dates.

FROM THE ALR PRESIDENT
Michael Smith

Our next ALR meeting is 14 FEB and then 14 MAR. We also have a WEB page and the address is http://www.azlegionriders.org/
The application to join the ALR and the requirements are poster on the web page.

VETERANS AFFAIRS AND REHABILITATION
Susan Schubert

In January, Veterans Affairs and Rehabilitation assisted the Good Neighbor Alliance to search for homeless veterans and others in the county. While the Marshall helped establish that there are no truly homeless folks within the city limits, thanks to the efforts of Ron Cole and his four-wheeler, 8 homeless were located living in encampments in the hills surrounding town. Ron is attempting to make contact with them so they can be directed to any needed assistance.

The repairs to the new veteran's outreach office are finally finished. Huge thanks to Gene Simpson who, with assistance from Jim Bugg, finished all the wall repairs and painted the walls and ceilings with paint he donated. It was an amazing transformation. And special thanks to Deirdre Nye who cleaned the space like a professional. There is a very short list of things still needed. 1 medium, light colored lampshade or, 2 medium matching lamp shades; a very small bathroom vanity (about 20"square); 2 small office trash cans; 2 tall bookcases; a jam box or other music player and copies of your favorite music; fabric for curtains for 2 windows, each 2'x3'; a mop, bucket, broom, dust pan and brush. If you'd like to donate any of these things, just call Susan Schubert at 255.1960.

In February, the outreach office will begin peer support groups for veterans with Traumatic Brain Injury and/or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as well as a peer support group for spouses. The first meeting of the spouses group is scheduled for 7 pm, Monday, February 23. Meeting times for the veterans group will be announced shortly. If you or someone you know is interested in joining one of these groups, please call Susan Schubert at 255.1960

At this writing, it appears that the state legislature will cut the budget for benefits counselors at the Arizona Department of Veterans Services by 50%. If this happens, it will become even more important for groups like the American Legion to provide advocacy and services for our veterans. The organization, Vets4Vets, has offered to hold a weekend workshop for Afghanistan and Iraq vets in our area. The workshop will be held in a retreat type setting and is totally free (including transportation to and from the site) to any veteran of these conflicts who is having difficulty readjusting to civilian life. All we need to provide is a committment from 10 veterans to attend. Vets4Vets will do the rest. If you know of anyone who would like to attend, please call, or have the veteran call, Susan Schubert at 255.1960. You might also want to check out their website: http://www.vets4vets.us/


POST AND UNIT NEWS AND VIEWS
Our annual golf tournament will be held March 8, 2009, at the short course in Benson. Volunteers are needs for this committee. See Mike Stout for more information.

IN MEMORIUM
Please remember Madeline Wyatt, who recently passed and Betty Roark who passed away last August.

Happy February Birthday
Joe Escapule and William Workman 2/4, Richard Tolway and Karen Larsen 2/6, Nellie Fought 2/8, Clifton Cilley and Doc Artes 2/9, Colin Patchin 2/12, Bo Long 2/15, Jo Robinson 2/16, Marty Stout 2/19, Mary Lou Tengwell, Portia Schweitzer and Sencie Patchin 2/24, Donald Schork 2/25, Bonnie Mason 2/27.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GEORGE and ABE
Presidents Day, February 16, 2009

George Washington, President, 1789-1797
On April 30, 1789, George Washington, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York, took his oath of office as the first President of the United States. "As the first of every thing, in our situation will serve to establish a Precedent," he wrote James Madison, "it is devoutly wished on my part, that these precedents may be fixed on true principles."
Born in 1732 into a Virginia planter family, he learned the morals, manners, and body of knowledge requisite for an 18th century Virginia gentleman.

He pursued two intertwined interests: military arts and western expansion. At 16 he helped survey Shenandoah lands for Thomas, Lord Fairfax. Commissioned a lieutenant colonel in 1754, he fought the first skirmishes of what grew into the French and Indian War. The next year, as an aide to Gen. Edward Braddock, he escaped injury although four bullets ripped his coat and two horses were shot from under him.

From 1759 to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Washington managed his lands around Mount Vernon and served in the Virginia House of Burgesses. Married to a widow, Martha Dandridge Custis, he devoted himself to a busy and happy life. But like his fellow planters, Washington felt himself exploited by British merchants and hampered by British regulations. As the quarrel with the mother country grew acute, he moderately but firmly voiced his resistance to the restrictions.

When the Second Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia in May 1775, Washington, one of the Virginia delegates, was elected Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. On July 3, 1775, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, he took command of his ill-trained troops and embarked upon a war that was to last six grueling years.

He realized early that the best strategy was to harass the British. He reported to Congress, "we should on all Occasions avoid a general Action, or put anything to the Risque, unless compelled by a necessity, into which we ought never to be drawn." Ensuing battles saw him fall back slowly, then strike unexpectedly. Finally in 1781 with the aid of French allies--he forced the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

Washington longed to retire to his fields at Mount Vernon. But he soon realized that the Nation under its Articles of Confederation was not functioning well, so he became a prime mover in the steps leading to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. When the new Constitution was ratified, the Electoral College unanimously elected Washington President.
He did not infringe upon the policy making powers that he felt the Constitution gave Congress. But the determination of foreign policy became preponderantly a Presidential concern. When the French Revolution led to a major war between France and England, Washington refused to accept entirely the recommendations of either his Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who was pro-French, or his Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who was pro-British. Rather, he insisted upon a neutral course until the United States could grow stronger.

To his disappointment, two parties were developing by the end of his first term. Wearied of politics, feeling old, he retired at the end of his second. In his Farewell Address, he urged his countrymen to forswear excessive party spirit and geographical distinctions. In foreign affairs, he warned against long-term alliances.

Washington enjoyed less than three years of retirement at Mount Vernon, for he died of a throat infection December 14, 1799. For months the Nation mourned him.

Abraham Lincoln, President, 1861-1865
Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it."

Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend Federal law and the Union. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. The Civil War had begun.

The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Five months before receiving his party's nomination for President, he sketched his life:
"I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks.... My father ... removed from Kentucky to ... Indiana, in my eighth year.... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.... Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher ... but that was all."

Lincoln made extraordinary efforts to attain knowledge while working on a farm, splitting rails for fences, and keeping store at New Salem, Illinois. He was a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and rode the circuit of courts for many years. His law partner said of him, "His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest."

He married Mary Todd, and they had four boys, only one of whom lived to maturity. In 1858 Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator. He lost the election, but in debating with Douglas he gained a national reputation that won him the Republican nomination for President in 1860.

As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.
Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg: "that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Lincoln won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end to the war. In his planning for peace, the President was flexible and generous, encouraging Southerners to lay down their arms and join speedily in reunion.

The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds.... "

On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was helping the South. The opposite was the result, for with Lincoln's death, the possibility of peace with magnanimity died.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/

FROM THE EDITOR
Karen Goodman
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