State VFW Closes Post

WILDWOOD – The glass door of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post 3509 was propped open March 1 as people hauled out the cement building’s contents one by one. 
The 82-year-old post was shut by the state VFW department Jan. 23 for bylaw violations, according to state Adjutant Ken Hagemann. Its fixtures were to be sold before the department listed the building for sale.
“They failed to be a fraternal, patriotic, historical, charitable, or educational entity of the Veterans of Foreign Wars,” Hagemann said. “They basically just became a bar.”
Post Commander David Callen, who said he is the longest-serving commander of Post 3509, said membership had declined to a handful of active members.
“I was doing the job for the commander all the way down the line to mopping the floors,” Callen said.
Post 3509’s closing mirrors a national trend. In the past decade, a thousand VFW posts closed across the country. The VFW lost a third of its membership in the past 20 years, according to AARP.
“The younger vets…they’re not piling into these VFWs like they did years ago,” said Callen, a Vietnam veteran. “Back then, it was a big deal.”
At its peak, the post had hundreds of members, but recently only about six members attended meetings, Callen said.
“There’ll never be as many veterans alive as there are today,” Hagemann said. “Because wars are fought with smaller amounts of people, there’s just less veterans in the world.”
He said a quarter of the approximately 100 members on the post’s roster were deceased, and out of the living members, half lived over 50 miles away.
For the last “couple” years, Hagemann said, the post didn’t distribute “Buddy” poppies, something the VFW adopted in 1923 to help disabled veterans, and distributed at Memorial Day.
Further, the post wasn’t engaged in schools and didn’t participate in Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Flag Day events, such as parades and ceremonies, examples of tasks required for posts to keep their charter.
“They didn’t even walk up the couple blocks up to the (Wildwoods) Convention Center” for the VFW convention, he said.
“We had several meetings with the membership; most of them were unwilling to change,” Hagemann said. “Only three members showed up (to our second meeting), and you need a minimum of five for a quorum.”
In December, the building went Sheriff’s Sale for unpaid water, and sewer bills and the state paid it off, he said.
“We weren’t making enough money to pay bills,” Callen said.
According to Hagemann, the post had two Alcoholic Beverage Control violations for sales to undercover agents.
He said it’s uncommon for the state to close a post, but less than 1 percent of VFWs are “in the same condition” as Post 3509, he estimated.
In an attempt to “revitalize” the post, the state department recruited eight members from other posts to help. But the task was “too much for them,” Hagemann said.
“The department and everyone in the (VFW) did the best that we could to save that post,” Hagemann said. “But financially, it would have drained our resources that we could use to help veterans.”
The remaining members of Post 3509 can join any other nearby post, Hagemann said. Callen said he might transfer to Cape May, Villas, or North Wildwood.
“Wildwood will probably never have another post again,” Hagemann said. “If 35 people want to get together, we’d be more than happy to help them start a post in Wildwood again.”
To contact Taylor Henry, email thenry@cmcherald.com.