September Editorial Opinion

Editorial Opinion: Membership & Brothers
Well, here we go with my monthly ranting. “We are all brothers, why can’t we get along better”? I was talking with Greg in the Rose Garden about 2:00 AM on a Friday night after the post had closed. Greg had a couple of drinks and was in a very verbal mood. The one point he was trying to make was that our Post was a brotherhood and we should get along better. I guess he was right to a large degree since, we are a band of brothers that you are either part of, or you don’t understand. I see our post pulled somewhat by 2 factions, one from the past that remembers “the good ole days” when we had few rules and a lot of members didn’t even pay attention to those rules. The second faction are the ones that have been in charge of the post for the past few years that realize “we can never go back to those days” because the world has changed since then and we must move into the 21st Century. This group realizes that the post must be run more like a business and that means we must consider more rules and restrictions than was enjoyed by the original membership. The biggest change is that we no longer have the automatic revenue stream from Bingo which is much less today than in the past. Without these rules and more controls in place on spending and other considerations, the post will not be here for us “old timers” to enjoy in our “golden years”. This brings up the 3rd faction that still is somewhat overlooked by our general membership, the IFF soldiers that have been in the military starting in the early 1990s. We should have 1/3 or more of our membership made up of this new group of veterans and we are nowhere close to that number. Our post needs to make a lot of changes to actively recruit that group of veterans. That was made clear when Jeremiah came up and became part of the discussion. He feels our post may be dying because we have not attracted younger vets and it may be too late to change it. Jeremiah has been a positive force in attracting a lot of the younger group that we have at the post, but his job may take him away from Springfield as he improves his career path. I agree, we should be doing more to attract the younger groups, but really don’t know how to go about it. Should we be recruiting from our existing active units in Springfield? Should we be seeking out young veterans that are not part of the active units? Should we be doing things at the post to make it more attractive to the young veteran? The answer to me is yes to all the above questions. How do we go about it? The answer is YOU. We all need to do what we can to find our target group and invite them to our post. Offer to buy them a drink, or even pay the first years dues to get them started (I have done this and a lot of other members have also). When you see younger people in the bar, ask them if they are in the military now or if they were ever in the military and find out if they would like to join our post. We are in a good position compared to other veterans groups, since we are open 7 days a week and almost 365 days a year. We are also debt-free and have a great wait staff and the bar business is starting to improve. I have one more point before I shut-up. We are brothers and like real blood brothers we argue and fight among ourselves. We can’t agree on how to run the post or how the post should be run, but this is really a good thing. Different opinions are important and make our post stronger, not weaker. But remember that we are brothers and if something on the outside threatens us (be it individuals, government entities or groups) we will still stand together and fight for each other because we are still brothers. Oh well, it’s just my opinion.
Bill Roark