Struthers VFW post marks 75 years of service to local vets

By EMMALEE C. TORISK

etorisk@vindy.com

STRUTHERS

Jim Dill’s Army service lasted

exactly five years, 10 months and 29 days.

Having been in the military for that long, Dill found he wanted to associate himself with fellow veterans upon his return from Vietnam in 1966.

So, not long afterward, Dill joined the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3538 at 157 Lowellville Road — just up the street from where he’d grown up in Struthers. He could remember when the post, which his father had belonged to from 1955 until his death eight years ago, was just an old house, as well as when the current structure was being built in the late 1950s.

Now, under Dill’s command, the post is celebrating its 75th anniversary.

It’s thanks to “the people working together — the veterans — for 75 years,” said Dill, who has been commander of VFW Post 3538 since 2006. “It’s a big milestone to have reached.”

He acknowledged that sometimes it’s been a struggle to keep the post afloat in recent years, especially with dwindling membership numbers. The post now has about 300 members, but had as many as 700 in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

This trend isn’t unique to VFW Post 3538; it’s happening across the country. Dill estimated that VFW posts throughout Ohio lost about 10,000 members last year alone.

The composition of members has also changed over the past few decades, Dill said. Years ago, membership consisted mostly of World War II and Korean War veterans, but just a small amount of the former remain. A majority of the post’s members are veterans who fought in Korea.

Dill added that it’s been difficult to get younger veterans involved, though some who served in the Persian Gulf War and in Afghanistan do belong to VFW Post 3538. Younger veterans’ involvement with the nonprofit service organization, he said, is limited by their other commitments: raising families and looking for work.

Even so, Dill has been actively recruiting new members. Despite being founded in 1899 and chartered by Congress in 1936, the VFW remains as relevant today as it ever was, he added.

“A lot of people are under the misconception that we sit around a bar and drink and tell old war stories. But that’s not the case at all,” Dill said. “Your VFW is a strong service organization.”

The VFW initially consisted of “veterans that were trying to help one another” and their families, Dill said, and that’s still the case.

In particular, the VFW advocates on behalf of veterans in Washingtwon, D.C., and in the past year alone has helped to preserve a number of military quality-of-life programs, including tuition assistance, and repeal of planned reductions to military retirees’ benefits, according to its website.

“A lot of your benefits that returning veterans are getting, veterans’ organizations were really instrumental. You have to fight for those things,” Dill said. “A lot of people just think these things are handed to them, but you have to lobby Congress.”

Ray Ornelas of Lowellville, a Korean War veteran who has belonged to VFW Post 3538 since 2000, agreed. It’s organizations like the VFW, Ornelas said, that keep “Washington on their toes to get the benefits that the veterans deserve.”

He added that he’s glad VFW wPost 3538 has been able to hang in there for so long and remains hopeful about its future.

“I think [declining membership] will turn around,” Ornelas said, “once younger veterans start realizing what they get from the World War II, Korea and Vietnam veterans.”