Sons of The American Legion

Greetings fellow SAL

I am hoping you have all had a peaceful Thanksgiving with your families. I regret that I have not been out to Squadrons and events due to a bout with Covid even though my wife and myself were vaccinated. Luckily it was mild and for the most part short lived. We still have limited taste and smell but have thankfully tested negative.

Enough about me . It is the time of years for the holiday season. As there are many upcoming holiday events please keep in mind our Veterans. Don’t just think of our active duty soldiers that are away from home but our veteran soldiers that are home and even though surrounded by friends, are alone. Holidays can bring on depression, the thought of lost friends, and that burning question why them and not me. Survivors guilt can rear its ugly head anytime, but now is one of the worst times. Please do your buddy checks call invite them for a cup of coffee, meet for a short breakfast or lunch. Just invite them to meet you at the post for a soda and conversation. Please do your part to bring some joy to our Veterans, you might be the one that makes a difference in someones life.

As part of team Dunn (American Legion Commander Daniel Dunn) motto is Getting it Dunn. We need to do our part to support our American Legion Family to promote and have our organization progress into the future. Membership is important, our membership has taken a hit from Covid we have a long way to go to get back to our membership numbers before Covid. We were pushing 10,000 we now only have currently 7942 of 9392 members for 2021. Remember all male descendants of our veterans are eligible there is no age limit. By recruiting our youth we are also recruiting the veteran for the Legion. Think out of the box involve the younger members, mentor and teach them about our great country and to honor our Veterans. Remember they are our future.

On the Lighter side our next meeting will be at Wayne Post 174 Wayne NJ. Dress will be Ugly sweater a 50/50 will be held for the best sweater prize and there will be a guest appearance of Santa. Come join us for a lighthearted meeting lets have some fun while conducting business for our great cause.

Happy Holidays

Henry F Hasselhan
Commander
Sons of the American Legion
Detachment of New Jersey

Greeting fellow Sons

I hope that you are all doing well through these rough times. Please do the buddy checks call your members and see how they are doing, if they need any assistance, or just someone to talk to. Don’t just call them to pay their dues. PTSD is real and is not just limited to our Military Veterans.

We the Officers of the Detachment are traveling around the state visiting Squadrons and attending events for our Veterans. One of our big events has just passed was our 31st Annual Watch Fire held in Stone Harbor. This 12 overnight vi-dual kept the fires burning to light the way home for our POW/MIA Veterans. This event was well attended by our American Legion Family, with myself ,Commander Dunn, and President Babli attending. Thank you to all that put this event on it was a great event you should attend at least once.

Please submit your Officers Squadron Reports. At a recent meeting I learned that our compute system resets after October and does not carry over the previous years information only the current years info. so please update these reports so you can receive correspondence from the Detachment. So far we only have 30 reports. Along with Squadron Reports Consolidated reports are Important. Some of you do not want recognition or awards just print that at the top. These reports are important for the National Commander of the American Legion for when he makes his report to Congress on how much we spend on Veterans and tries to get the Government to better care for our Veterans.

The MYSAL.ORG website is now MyLegion.ORG since they did this move there have been a lot of bugs. Please at this time send your membership to Trenton by snail mail. There has been a problem across the Country with non reporting back to the states with the computerized membership. Until this is fixed the membership reports reflected by the Detachment will be incorrect . I know my own squadron is missing at least 20 members as per the state records. I will be looking into it with Trenton on how we can correct this or if we need to wait for national to catch up. At Fall NEC they believe that this will be corrected soon but no exact timeline was given. Please be patient as it is out of our hands and the Department NEC and Detachment NEC are ware, and are keeping a close eye on this.

DETACHMENT MEETINGS ARE MOVING THRUOUT THE STATE ! WATCH FOR NOTIFICATIONS OF LOCATIONS

For God and Country
Henry F Hasselhan
Commander
Detachment of New Jersey