Last week we learned that during the Vietnam War on September 1, 1966, The American Legion voiced great concern over the fate of our prisoners of war and urged Congress to form a committee to investigate our MIA/POW’s. Today The Legion is still working with Congress and the Defense POW/ MIA Accounting Office for accountability of missing persons. As of 2018, there are still 1,592 military still missing.
For years the Legion supported a National POW/MIA Recognition Day. Eventually the National League of Families proposed the third Friday of September as a commemoration day. Every year, National POW/MIA Recognition Day was introduced until 1985, when Congress determined that commemorative days would no longer be considered.
The President now signs a proclamation each year. Resolution 288 adopted at the 67th American Legion National Convention, calls for designating a POW/MIA Empty Chair at all official meetings of the American Legion as a physical symbol of the thousands of POW/MIA’s still unaccounted for from all wars and conflicts involving the United States.
Moving into the 1970s for this week, we find the Legion being involved in the safety of children at Halloween. In 1972, The American Legion implemented a nationwide Halloween Safety Program for young trick-or-treaters, the first and only one of its kind. Since then, the Legion Committee on Children and Youth has urged the membership to conduct Halloween programs that are designed to keep young children safe in an effort to reduce accidents associated with Halloween.
Keeping kids out of harm’s way on Halloween started well before 1972. As far back as 1930, The American Legion Monthly described local posts’ efforts to put on community Halloween celebrations to cut down on youthful danger and vandalism. You can download this brochure at https://www.floridalegion. org/wp-content/uploads/ 2017/06/cy_halloween. pdf. We will make this available annually beginning next year before Halloween. I apologize I did not get this out last week for this year’s Halloween on October 31.
On April 1, 1975, the Legion- sponsored Freedom Bell went aboard the Freedom Train during its tour of the country in celebration of the U.S. Bicentennial. Six years later the bell was dedicated at its permanent home in Columbus Plaza, opposite Union Station in Washington DC.
In 1976, an outbreak of bacterial pneumonia occurred in a convention of the Legion at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia. This pneumonia killed 34 people at the convention and later became known as Legionnaires’ disease (Legionellosis). The bacterium that causes the illness was later named Legionella.
Next week we move into the 1980s where we find The American Legion being the largest single contributor to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington D.C.
