Commander's Time

To my fellow 43ers,

I’m thrilled with how this year has started, and I’m looking forward to more of the same as we practice continued service and camaraderie.  We’ve seen attendance on Sunday FUNday and bar nights grow week by week. We’re watching events bringing in money to pay the bills.

We’re seeing transparency get better and will get even better because we want to make sure that there’s nothing to hide and so that you can hold us accountable. We’re definitely getting there.

The shift from just popping motions in front of the membership to having informational sessions, I feel, is not only positive but necessary for our large organization to start working better together, and there’s a feeling that it’s happening. Yes, we still have those clinging to factions and creating drama, but those who are trying to be positive in pursuit of Post improvement are shining through. We are going to need more of that as items like looking at organizing our operations into our traditional 501c19 veterans’ service organization also to include a 501c3 non-profit and a wholly owned for-profit subsidiary. We also need to give consideration to the options available to us for the El Centro property, and that doesn’t mean that we’re automatically pushing for a sale. If you attended the meeting that featured the first informational session, you saw a collection of options.

To get through these challenges of finding what’s best for the Post, it would be so helpful to have participation from the members in a professional manner. I love intense scrutiny and debate, but we don’t get anywhere with tantrums, grudges, insults, and dramatic projections. We’re all on the same team.

The 43 excellence in service has been on display these past couple of months. We’ve seen Christopher Loverro delivering humanitarian aid to the victims in Ukraine. We also witnessed B.J. Lange selflessly give medical support to a shooting victim just moments after the shooting. These two are shining examples of continued service and putting mission over self.

Hollywood Post 43 has such a collection of great individuals. My challenge is to create a great community out of these individuals. We can all help with recruiting dynamic, diverse, dutiful people to join our 43 Family. If you are a Legionnaire, Son or Auxiliary, please recruit for your branch of the family tree, but don’t forget the other branches!

That’s a lot this week, but I’m inspired to be here at Boys Nation. I’m watching a group of Legion Family members working to make a very successful program even better. They debate logistics and objectives and priorities, but when the debate is over, it’s over. They come together and handle the task. I want that so much for Post 43. It will be a more productive and positive experience if we can work together to create that type of environment.

Again, this is a lot for a newsletter article, but I want a call to action for the good folks of Family 43 to step up, so we can make a difference.

In service to this amazing post,

Commander Jeff Daly