MOON BROTHERS POST 275. June Meeting is a Joint Family Meeting. Legion, Sons of the American Legion, Legion Riders and A
MOON BROTHERS POST 275
J U N E I SSU E 1 31
Next Meeting: June 3rd, 2017 12:30 P.M. Kenton County Court House Independence Email:
[email protected] or phone: 859-429-0750 Website: www.moonbrothers275.org Facebook: Moon Brothers Post 275 of the American Legion
June Meeting is a Joint Family Meeting Legion, Sons of the American Legion, Legion Riders and Auxiliary It is a potluck eating at 12:30 p.m. at the courthouse. Bring a sharable! Meeting will commence at 1:00 p.m. Memorial Day Parade and Ceremony Thank you to all who participated in the parade and volunteered to help setup and stayed to teardown! We all have someone to honor and remember not just on Memorial Day but everyday! If you were at the parade you may have seen the Operation Honors Banners some people purchased to remember a loved one or friend hero. The banners will be displayed in the Kroger parking lot soon and until after Veterans’ Day and will go back up Memorial Day 2018 and 2019. Three years of displaying these grand heroes! Buying an Honor Banner is very easy! You can go to our Post webpage or Facebook page to find the links or you can call the Post, the Commander or any Post officer to ask for help in ordering. The banners are $149.00 each, very durable and very detailed. You can put a message on the banner if you like. Banners can even be of military, police, fire or Veterans who are still around! What a great way to remember and honor your heroes! Link to Honor Banners http://operationhonor.org/product/honor-banner/
2017/2018 Post Officers Election Results: Commander = Rusty Mardis, 1st Vice Commander = Carey Heuer, 2nd Vice Commander = John Mills, Adjutant & Historian = Wayne Lohmoeller, Finance Officer = Tom Frye, Chaplain = Melinda Mills, Service Officer = Tasha Fields, Sergeant at Arms = Andrew Elder, Social Media Officer = Jennifer Wesselman Do you have an address of a deployed family member? The Legion Riders want to send our deployed family members gift cards. Send their information directly to Andrew Elder, Director of Post 275 Riders
[email protected] Or call the Post phone number listed at the top. Help them to support your troops!
Unserviceable American Flags will be properly disposed of on June 14th at Sterling Staggs Park across from the post office at 7:00 p.m. There will be a ceremony for the dignified disposal. Hope you can attend!
Ladies and Gentleman, once again is my honor to represent you as the Moon Brothers Commander. Thank you for your vote, support and confidence. I want to take some time to look over our goal accomplishment for the previous year, and then look at the aggressive agenda for the upcoming year. First, I want to thank all our volunteers for the past year – without you we accomplish nothing! Plus, I need to thank all our future officers because without you we will not accomplish anything. Our organization is based on volunteerism – we need you to get things done! Let’s face it, as an organization we are getting old; we are all extremely busy; and we are all tired. However, we must do what we can do for our Legion, for our community and must important for our country. Give what you can – if it’s your time – awesome! If it’s a gift – awesome! If its cold hard cash – awesome! Do what you can, because we continue to do great things for our military, veterans, families, community and country. I promise you that! Also, remember if you give a donation as cash to your local post – no money is spent on your leadership, none of us take a salary …. We are volunteers! All funds go directly in support of our vision and mission; all money goes toward our local military, veterans, family, and community. Now, did we meet our goals for last year? Please send me an email or call me and let me know --- here were our previous objectives and goals. (My thoughts on the matter are in Air Force Blue) Focus on the Legion Family (I believe we accomplished joining our legion family together … we started quarterly family meetings, and had a Christmas Party together) Kicking Off Operation Honor Banners (We started, poor sales, but we started) Establish our 501 3(c) Charity Foundation (Attempted, but the cost was higher than expected – I will continue to push this objective for the new year) Bring in recognition parking to Independence for Military, Veterans and Legion Family Members (Sort of completed; we had discussions with Kroger’s (nothing yet), but the City of Independence agreed to lead the charge and is placing a Veteran Parking spot at the front of the City Building – I hope this drives motivation to have other business spots in the City). Re-develop the Independence Veterans Office (IVO) (Maybe? We worked diligently with the Kentucky Department of Veteran Affairs and the City to establish a Benefits office at the City Building – now we need to ensure it is fully utilize so we don’t lose it!) Last Year’s Commander Goals Our Post's history of success in fulfilling this mission is truly remarkable, but to be honest we need all our members to be advocates and active volunteers to continue in our historic tradition. I will have three objectives and goals for all of us as we continue through 2016 and into 2017 they are: Goal One: To keep focus on why we are here .... For God and Country, and actively remember this as we decide on all our post activities and functions. (Honestly, I am not sure we needed this as a previous goal – we always function in this manner. But, I would like to see more activity on this front with our Independence Churches to push forward our belief for God and Country) Goal Two: Every Member is an active member to your capability for our voted-on functions. (I think we brutally failed to achieve this goal. It’s always the same people doing the work – it’s sad, quite frankly; however, we have another year to step up and be involved. I really don’t get it – we do so much for our local community …. We are not asking for a tremendous amount of time, energy or effort … give a small monetary donation, give 4 hours a quarter for highway clean-up, volunteer to run a 50/50 raffle at the ball, do 2 hours at Flag day, give an hour cleaning riffles – I understand everyone is busy … I work three jobs, raise a family, volunteer, party, run two properties and play hard and try to be a good commander --- I fail sometimes, I don’t make every event, I miss deadlines, etc. but I try my best ---- all I ask is for you to try, to help, and to give. Please try – that’s all we ask … again, we are all volunteers!) Goal Three: Unified Family achieving a Unified Vision! (I think we came real close to accomplishing this goal … we have regular Legion Family meetings; we get together as a leadership team and we try hard to work as one in a unified vision --- let’s keep up the great work!) Aggressive Agenda Coming Up! Here is the aggressive Agenda coming up for this year! Hey, if we are keeping score, I am going with Meatloaf, and saying “two outa three ain’t bad” for last year, but unfortunatel y still unacceptable; however, I know we can do better this year and go 3 for 3 plus nail 3 for 3 for last year’s objectives - ready! Here are the goals for this year: Goal One: Enough fouling around – Let’s get our 501 (3)c. This has been a goal since I joined the Mighty Moon Brothers Post 275. It’s a pain in the ass to do, but we need to get it done. If we don’t have time let’s put it in the budget to accomplish by hiring someone to do it for us. This opens many doors for our fundraising activities and allows us to seriously consider establishing a Post Home & Museum. Goal Two: School and Children Sponsorship – One of the Pillars of the American Legion is Children & Youth and although I am combining this a little with Americanism, I truly believe we as a Post need to do more for our future generations. Therefore, goal two is focused around our Schools and our Children’s. I am establishing a committee to work with our local schools to offer mentorship, support, recognition through awards and small funding programs to aid our Schools and Children in our communities. I will task the committee to work toward this goal and bring in our local schools to support our community and our country. We need regular discussions with the schools on the Oratorical Contest, Boys State, Awards, Recognition and Scholarships. Goal Three: Independence Veteran Recognition – we are extremely lucky to have the ear of the City of Independence, and the Mayor and City Administrator has agreed to work on our behalf to push our agenda in Veteran recognition. They are leading the efforts by placing a Veteran parking space in the front of the City building, and are willing to look at dedicating roads, bridges, park foundations and other items based off our recommendations. This is a huge honor for us and I will establish a committee to take this charge of finding I ndependence Veterans who deserve the honor of being recognized by the City.
