Adjutant’s OUTLOOK: If You Build It… they‘ll need a reservation

Veterans Memorial - Post 156 - Paola, KS

Greetings, Legionnaires and Legion Family!

First and foremost, I want to express my sincere apologies for missing my first installation meeting since being reappointed as Adjutant. I hope to have a chance to connect with all of our newly inducted members in the days to come.

The reason I asked to be excused for the evening was to celebrate my 40th birthday with a trip back to my hometown in Kansas.

During that trip, I had the opportunity to visit American Legion Miami County Post 156. It was a bittersweet experience as I arrived to find the Post closed for the night and the adjacent state-of-the-art baseball fields empty on a relatively cool Saturday.

When I asked my old friends what had happened, they said with a sigh that the city had raised taxes to upgrade the fields, now required reservations to use them, and that the Legion had lost half of its parking lot to the city in the upgrades.

This situation struck a chord with me as I couldn’t help but draw parallels to the challenges our own Post has faced in recent years. We too have found ourselves asking how many of our privileges we should sacrifice for the sake of upgrades. We too have had to have hard conversations about what it takes to sustain what’s been built. I hope and pray that we are able to find solutions that lead, not to an empty Post and a dark space, but to a bustling hub of community activity.

As members of the American Legion, we are part of a community service organization dedicated to serving our veterans and the broader community. We have a responsibility to stand together, address our challenges, and work towards finding solutions that benefit us all.

As we welcome our newest members at the meeting tonight, seek to impress upon them the importance of service over self. Please find out how they want to help and point them to the leaders in our Post who will enable them to do so.

For those of you who plan to get involved at the highest levels of the Post, I’d encourage you to attend the upcoming Executive Committee next Monday. I’d also like to remind you that the Board is still actively seeking my permanent replacement as Adjutant. If you have interest, please reach out so we can talk.

I’ll see you all on the other side of the rainbow very soon.

Until then, from Oz:

Yours in service,

Josh Epstein

Adjutant, Post 43