Veterans halls say they’re just hanging on

Local bars and social halls run by Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion posts have fallen on hard times during the past year

Local bars and halls run by Veteran of Foreign Wars and American Legion posts have been hard hit by the pandemic.

NEW BEDFORD, MASS. » Paul Guilbeault knew the writing was on the wall for the last Veterans of Foreign Wars post in this city south of Boston when businesses across Massachusetts were ordered to close as the coronavirus pandemic took hold last March.

Within six months, the 90-year-old Korean War vet was proven right. VFW Post 3260 in New Bedford, a chapter of the national fraternity of war vets established in 1935, had surrendered its charter and sold the hall to a church.

“The economic shutdown is what killed us,” said Guilbeault, who has overseen the post’s finances for years. “There’s no way in the world that we could make it. A lot of these posts are barely hanging on. Most don’t make a huge profit.”

Local bars and halls run by VFW and American Legion posts — those community staples where vets commiserate over beers and people celebrate weddings and other milestones — were already struggling when the pandemic hit. After years of declining membership, restrictions meant to slow the spread of COVID-19 became a death blow for many.

The closures have added to the misery from a pandemic that’s hit military veterans hard. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recently estimated the death toll in its facilities alone was approaching 11,000.

In many states, veterans posts were ordered to close like other bars and event halls last spring. Their supporters argued that the spaces serve a greater community purpose than their for-profit counterparts and should have been allowed to reopen sooner.

They say many posts quickly pivoted their community service efforts to respond to the pandemic. In Lakeview, Michigan, VFW Post 3701 made hundreds of masks for workers and operated blood drives with the Red Cross. In Queens, New York, American Legion Post 483 ran a food pantry that fed thousands. And posts from Connecticut to North Carolina have been hosting vaccine registration drives and clinics.

The closure of some halls and bars also means vets dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder and other wartime trauma have lost a critical safe space amid an isolating pandemic, leaders say.

“They can talk about things here that happened to them in the war that they’d never say to their psychiatrist or even their families,” said Harold Durr, commander of American Legion Post 1 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.