Bridgeport American Legion Post 218 will close its doors after 68 years

RIDGEPORT – After 68 years in existence, Bridgeport Post 218 of the American Legion has announced that the chapter will close its doors this year.

The pending closure was confirmed by Adjutant Sherilyn Jacobson of College Place, Wash, who is the registered agent of record for the non-profit corporation that was formed on June 22, 1950. A declining membership and advancing age of those few who remain members was given as the reason that the Post will cease operations and transfer ownership of its flags to Columbia Post 97 in Brewster. Of those who remain members of the Bridgeport Post, one will transfer membership to Brewster and the others to Post 110 in Lacey, Wash, near Olympia.

“They just don’t have the members,” said Area Three Commander Denny Pittman, a member of the Brewster Post. “They’re just getting too old to do anything anymore.”
Pittman said Columbia Post 97, that performs Memorial Day ceremonies at the Pateros Cemetery, Packwood Cemetery, Fort Okanogan Memorial Cemetery in Malott, the Bridge Street Bridge, and Locust Grove Cemetery in Brewster, will add Bridgeport’s cemetery to its schedule next year.

The Bridgeport High School Principal Tamra Jackson arranged for the BHS juniors to pitch in at the cemetery as a class project. The students put out flags and small crosses on veterans’ graves the Friday before Memorial Day and then return the following Tuesday to take the flags down.

“The junior class will continue to clean the headstones and put up the flags prior to Memorial Day and then take it all down again after the three-day weekend,” Jackson confirmed last Tuesday, July 3.

Dissolving an American Legion Post is a very involved process, said Jacobson. The procedure runs to three pages of decommission instructions from the Legion national headquarters in Indianapolis. The process proceeds through the post, district, area and state levels before submission to Legion headquarters.

“The process probably won’t be completed until the conference this fall,” Jacobson said of the post decommissioning.

To remain its active status, an American Legion Post is required to have a minimum of 16 members and to send representatives to the organization’s spring and fall conferences and the state convention. Post 218 has been below minimum strength for many years and those numbers are dwindling.

This year the state convention, marking the Legion’s 100th birthday, will be held in Spokane from July 18-22. The fall conference has yet to be scheduled but is usually held in Ephrata or Wenatchee in mid-October.

 “There are 600,000 veterans in Washington state but only 25,000 are members of the American Legion,” Pittman said.
Membership in the Legion is restricted to veterans who served in a military branch during periods of war. For many years, American Legion Posts have petitioned the national headquarters to open membership to all veterans, not just those who served in times of war.

AMVETS, also known as American Veterans, was formed as an organization for all veterans, including reservists, who honorably served in the military. Another group, the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) is open to veterans who served on foreign soil or in hostile waters.

One of the problems with recruiting veterans to join the Legion in small communities is economic opportunity, Jacobson said. Veterans who complete their military service are discharged with skills they can use in civilian life, so they tend to gravitate to larger urban areas where job opportunities are greater.