Bulletin

Welcome to all Veterans

This is the AMVETS Department of Massachusetts Official Website. Please feel free to browse this site. We have very useful information for any veteran. You can go from the USO to the VA through this site. You can also go to the Department of Defense Branches as well as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’s websites. You can also learn how to get any Veterans ‘s benefits that are due you.

Take the time to read the bulletin it will let you know what is going on in the AMVETS. Checkout the calendar for the events that are going to be taking place. Check for a post near you and look to see if you would like to become a member of an organization that is helping all Veterans. This is the mission of the AMVETS.

 

  The membership card have arrived at the department office.  You may pick them up yourself by making arrangements with Ginny –OR-  Pick them up at the staff meeting at Post #51 Randolph Sept 7^th  or the SEC in Russell MA Sept 19^th.  The District Commanders are asked to attend either meeting to distribute the cards to the posts in their district.

Thanks Ginny

 

HONORS AND AWARDS: Tom Davitt, Chairman

Tickets are available for this years’ Pilgrims Award Banquet to be held on Saturday Night November 6, 2010 at AMVETS Post #161 Lynn, MA.  Cocktail hour is 6pm-7pm with Dinner and Awards begin at 7pm.  The tickets are $30.00 a person with tables of eight available.  The ad-book will also be offered this year with your great support.  Full page ad is $100.00; half-page ad is $60.00; and a third of a page for $35.00.  All checks are made payable to the AMVETS Dept of MA and in the memo section please indicate "ad-book" and or "tickets".  The following Committee members can be contacted for tickets; Al Temple; Charles Sancranti; Edmund Veator; Charles Nishan; and Dick Burnell. Lets' make this night a huge success and join us in honoring this years' recipients.  Please advertise the flyer at your home post that will be available at the SEC Meeting on Sept 19, 2010.

 

All,

 Per our agreement to share the information presented at the Membership Roundtable in Louisville, Ky., I have attached the information presented.

 I want to thank you all for your attendance, and next year, I will make sure that the Membership Meeting is held earlier and doesn’t conflict with any other meetings of significance.

 My list of distribution is based on what I could make out from the listing.  If you want share this with someone else, please do so.

Kind Regards,

Phillip A. Ledwell

AMVETS National Membership Director

Phone 301 683-4020  Direct

 

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Melissa Daly Ramos

                              
                         Reaching Out for Charles Denmead
                  Traumatic Brain Injury Recovery Fundraiser
                                     

                        Friday, September 24, 2010
                       Portuguese American Civic Club
                 175 School Street, Taunton, MA 02780
                       5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (rain or shine)
 
                 Dinner & Entertainment   -    $25.00 Donation

                                             For Tickets Contact:
                            Sarah Denmead Furtado at 774-451-6938
                                 or Brenda Mello at 774-402-1335
                         or e-mail: reachingoutforcharlie@verizon.net
           Please make checks payable to: Reaching out for Charles Denmead

 

 

 

Flyer for Fundraiser.doc (477.4 KB) Download | Remove

Donation Letter.doc (36.8 KB) Download | Remove

 

I've attached the flyer and donation letter for the fundraiser for Charlie Denmead. If there is anything else you need please let me know.

Amvets and Vets Center Mobile Van

 

 

Jerry Greenwood, Vets Center Counselor, is bringing the VETS CENTER MOBILE VAN for the Northeast Region from White River Junction, Vt. To Rochester, NH on Thursday,  Sept. 9, 2010.  The Van will be located at the Elks parking lot (on Columbus Avenue) from 1000 hours to 1800 hours (10am-6pm).  All veterans are welcome.

The Vets Center provides readjustment counseling and benefit services for Veterans and their families.  They also provid links to other services available from the US Dept of Veterans Affairs.

The new public law 104-262 extends the definition of Vietnam era war zone veterans  (PL  104-275) including other war zone veterans.

Members of the Amvets (American Veterans) Post 1, Rochester, NH will be on hand to provide information of State and local agencies.
 

Hi! My name is Becky Newsome and my Dad is a WWII Veteran who will be
>> celebrating his 90th birthday on Sept. 11, 2010. My goal is for him to
>> receive 1000 Birthday/Thanks For Your Service To Our Country cards.
>> If possible could you PLEASE pass on my request to all the VFW'S in your
>> state?
>> My Dad is a great guy who would be honored to receive a personal note
>> from  other Veterans who have also served our country.
>> Send Cards To: Albert Knisley
>>               P.O. Box 6
>>               Greenfield, Ohio 45123
>> Thank You,
>> Becky Newsome
>> P.S. Thank You For Your Service To Our Country

White Clover success story

On Saturday August 21, 2010, our AMVETS Post 32 held our annual "White Clover" fundraiser for hospitalized veterans; we raised $3,315.50 all of which will got to fund our hospital programs. This was done with only 10 members from the Post and 4 additional non-Amvet volunteers.  Thanks to all who came out to help, you can be very proud of your efforts for a great cause.  For all of you folks from other Posts' it is a great way to raise funds for your programs.  Tom Glenn, PDC

 

Now here is a postage stamp the Postal Service should be proud of!

 

 

Makes ya proud to put this stamp on your envelopes........ 

  

   

Bill Mauldin stamp honors grunts' hero.   The post office gets a lot of criticism.  

Always  has, always will.  And with the renewed push to get  rid  of Saturday mail delivery, expect complaints to  intensify. 

But  the United States Postal Service deserves a standing ovation for  something that happened last month:

Bill Mauldin got his own  postage stamp.

 

Mauldin died at age 81 in the early days of 2003.   The end of his life had been rugged.  He had been  scalded in a bathtub, which led to  terrible injuries and  infections; Alzheimer's disease was inflicting its cruelties.  Unable to care for himself after the scalding,  he became a  resident of a California nursing home, his health and spirits in   rapid decline. 

 

He was not forgotten, though.  Mauldin, and his  work, meant so much to the millions of Americans who fought in  World War II, and  to those who had waited for them to come  home.  He was a kid cartoonist for  Stars and Stripes,  the military newspaper; Mauldin's drawings of his muddy,  exhausted, whisker-stubbled infantrymen Willie and Joe were the  voice of truth about what it was like on the front  lines. 

 

Mauldin was  an enlisted man just like the soldiers he drew for; his gripes  were their gripes, his laughs their laughs, his heartaches their  heartaches.  He was one of them.  They loved  him. 

 

He never  held back.  Sometimes, when his cartoons cut too close for  comfort, superior officers tried to tone him down.  In one  memorable incident, he enraged Gen. George S. Patton, who informed  Mauldin he wanted the pointed cartoons ? Celebrating the fighting  men, lampooning the high-ranking officers ? To stop.   Now! 

 

"I'm beginning to feel like a fugative from th' law of  averages." 

The news passed from soldier  to soldier.  How was Sgt. Bill Mauldin going to stand up to  Gen. Patton?  It seemed impossible.  

 

Not quite.   Mauldin, it turned out, had an ardent fan: Five-star Gen.  Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces in   Europe . Ike put out the word: Mauldin draws what Mauldin wants.   Mauldin won. Patton lost.  

 

If, in your line  of work, you've ever considered yourself a  young hotshot, or  if you've ever known anyone who has felt that way about him or  herself, the story of Mauldin's young manhood will humble you.   Here is what, by the time he was 23 years old, Mauldin  accomplished: 

 

"By the way, wot wuz them changes you wuz 

Gonna make  when you took over last month, sir?" 

He  won the Pulitzer Prize, was featured on the cover of Time  magazine.  His book "Up Front" was the No. 1 best-seller in   the United States . 

 

All of that at 23.  Yet, when he returned to  civilian life and grew older, he never lost that boyish Mauldin  grin, never outgrew his excitement about doing his job, never  big-shotted or high-hatted the people with whom he worked every  day. 

 

I was  lucky enough to be one of them.  Mauldin roamed the hallways  of the Chicago Sun-Times in the late 1960s and early 1970s with no  more officiousness or air of haughtiness than if he was a copyboy.   That impish look on his face  remained. 

 

He had achieved so  much.  He won a second Pulitzer Prize, and he should have won  a third for what may be the single greatest editorial cartoon in  the history of the craft: his deadline rendering, on the day  President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, of the statue at the   Lincoln Memorial slumped in grief, its head cradled in its  hands.  But he never acted as if he was better than the  people he met.  He was still Mauldin, the enlisted  man. 

 

During the  late summer of 2002, as Mauldin lay in that California nursing  home, some of the old World War II infantry guys caught wind of  it.  They didn't want Mauldin to go out that way.  They  thought he should know he was still their hero. 

 

"This is th' town  my pappy told me about." 

Gordon  Dillow, a columnist for the Orange County Register, put out the  call in Southern California for people in the area to send their  best wishes to Mauldin.  I joined Dillow in the effort,  helping to spread the appeal nationally, so Bill would not feel so  alone.  Soon, more than 10,000 cards and letters had   arrived at Mauldin's bedside.  

Better than that, old soldiers began to  show up just to sit with Mauldin, to let him know that they were  there for him, as he, so long ago, had been there for them.   So many volunteered to visit Bill that there was a waiting  list.  Here is how Todd DePastino, in the first paragraph of  his wonderful biography of Mauldin, described   it: 

"Almost every day in the summer and fall of 2002 they  came to Park Superior nursing home in Newport Beach , California ,  to honor Army Sergeant, Technician Third Grade, Bill Mauldin.   They came bearing relics of their youth: medals, insignia,  photographs, and carefully  folded newspaper clippings.   Some wore old garrison caps.  Others arrived  resplendent in uniforms over a half century old.  Almost all  of them wept as they filed down the corridor like pilgrims  fulfilling some long-neglected obligation." 

 

One of the  veterans explained to me why it was so important: "You would have  to be part of a combat infantry unit to appreciate what moments of  relief Bill gave us.  You had to be reading a soaking wet  Stars and Stripes in a water-filled foxhole and then see one of   his cartoons." 

 

"Th' hell this ain't th' most important hole in the world.  I'm in it."

Mauldin is buried in   Arlington National Cemetery .  Last month, the kid cartoonist  made it onto a first-class postage stamp.  It's an honor that  most generals and admirals never receive.   

 

 

What Mauldin  would have loved most, I believe, is the sight of the two guys who  keep him company on that stamp.  

Take a look at it.

There's Willie.  There's  Joe. 

 

 

And there, to  the side, drawing them and smiling that shy, quietly observant  smile, is Mauldin himself.  With his buddies, right where he  belongs. Forever.