2009-2010 Membership Chairman
Virginia Lisbon has posted a comment for all the Auxiliary members and Units…
I would like to thank everyone who held membership positions and all those that paid their dues and signed up new members. The Dept. of Pa. was third in membership by National calculations but we are number one in my book.
The American Legion Legacy Scholarship Fund
competes again for $250K Pepsi Refresh Everything grant
Votes Needed!
INDIANAPOLIS (June 2, 2010) – For the second consecutive month, The American Legion Legacy Scholarship Fund is competing for a $250,000 grant to be awarded by the Pepsi Beverage Company as part of its Refresh Everything Project.
While Pepsi did not announce just where the Legacy Scholarship Fund finished in its May voting competition, the top two charities win the grants and the remaining top 100 are “rolled over” to participate in the following month’s competition. During the evening of May 31, The Legacy Scholarship was ranked 49th of 1,341 participating charities.
The American Legion’s Operation Comfort Warriors finished in first place during February’s voting and has already been awarded the top grant of $250,000.
“While I am disappointed that The American Legion Legacy Scholarship Fund did not win a grant, I am not surprised that we apparently finished in the top tier,” said The American Legion National Commander Clarence E. Hill. “If The American Legion family and all of our friends support this great cause, we can do better in June. Operation Comfort Warriors finished first in February. This is not about the same organization winning twice. It’s about assisting an entirely different group of deserving people, those whose parents paid the ultimate price and sacrificed their lives while serving in our military during the War on Terrorism. The American Legion Legacy Scholarship Fund ensures that the children of these fallen heroes will be able to attend college and not have to worry about the rising cost of higher education. We can support the children of these heroes simply by voting every day throughout the month of June. The process will cost you nothing, but the reward can truly make a difference.”
Visitors can cast their votes at www.refresheverything.com/theamericanlegionlegacyscholarship or by clicking on the “Vote Daily” Pepsi panel at www.legion.org .
Hill also recommended that Legionnaires, Legion family members, friends and supporters of The American Legion spread the message to vote for The American Legion Legacy Scholarship Fund.
“Individual voting alone will not win this competition,” Hill said. “We need people to post it on their web sites, Facebook and Twitter accounts. They should use all social media methods at their disposal. Operation Comfort Warriors was able to win because American Legion posts, Auxiliary units, Sons of the American Legion squadrons and American Legion Riders chapters all came together and worked toward a common goal. Spreading the word in newsletters and the mainstream media can also help us replicate our earlier success.”
With a current membership of 2.5-million wartime veterans, The American Legion was founded in 1919 on the four pillars of a strong national security, veterans affairs, Americanism, and youth programs. Legionnaires work for the betterment of their communities through more than 14,000 posts across the nation.
Free Admission For Military At Museums
The National Endowment for the Arts is inaugurating a new program Monday to give active military personnel and their families free admission all
summer to hundreds of U.S. museums, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Phillips Collection.
The project, Blue Star Museums, is a joint effort of the endowment and Blue Star Families, a nonprofit that addresses the challenges of military families. So far more than 600 museums have signed on, including about 30 children’s museums.
In Washington, Maryland and Virginia, 70 museums have pledged support. The list includes many of New York’s flagship attractions: the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Brooklyn Museum.
“It is a great way to thank the servicemen and women,” said Rocco Landesman, the NEA chairman, in an interview before he officially launched the
effort at the San Diego Museum of Art on Monday. The idea was hatched several months ago by Joan Shigekawa, senior deputy chairman and Kathy Roth-Douquet, chairman of Blue Star Families. Landesman explained that the effort dovetails nicely with directives from the White House to engage military families. “The president just mandated a 90-day review of how to help military families. And Mrs. Obama has made this one of her primary areas of engagement, along with her husband and Dr. Jill Biden,” he said. “Military families have limited time together. But if the choice is sitting at home or going to a museum, one factor will not be the cost. It will be on the list of fine things that a family can do,” Landesman said. At the same time, the recession has caused serious problems for many museums, as private and public donations shrink. Landesman said he worried about the museums’ willingness to lose revenue. “I called a number of museum directors because I thought there would be a lot of pushback,” he said. “That didn’t happen at all. The buy-in has been unbelievable.” At the Phillips, the staff decided to jump right in. “It is the right thing to do. We work all the time to see creative solutions to budget
challenges and we didn’t want those challenges to get in the way of extending this offer,” said Ann Greer, the museum’s director of communications and
marketing. The museum offers admission and membership discounts to the military on a regular basis. And at times it has provided a welcome break
for them. Richard Diebenkorn, the abstract artist, visited the Phillips in the 1940s when he was stationed at Quantico. “He said it was his refuge,”
Greer said.
The free admission, also available to active duty reservists and active duty National Guard, will be offered from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
On Monday, the NEA will unveil on its Web site an interactive map with the participating museums and a dedicated blog. The NEA has designed programs to capture the experiences of men and women serving overseas and bring quality entertainment to military installations.
“Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience,” now an online project, encourages the soldiers to discuss their experiences in Afghanistan
and Iraq. “Great American Voices” and “Shakespeare in American Communities” visited military bases.
“This is a notable expansion of those programs,” Landesman said. Other participating area museums include the Baltimore Museum of Art,
the American Visionary Art Museum, the Walters Art Museum and the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum in Baltimore. In Washington, the DAR Museum, the Dumbarton House and the Woodrow Wilson House are included.