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While the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) in Iowa is celebrating it’s 100th anniversary, the VFW post in Creston began in 1928. The VFW is a network of service members that advocate and provide for each other when they return from combat. The VFW was instrumental in the fight for the G.I. Bill and compensating Vietnam veterans for the side effects of their exposure to Agent Orange. The Creston post was at one point the largest in the state, but now suffers from declining memberships like all the other posts in the state.
“One time Creston’s post was the biggest post in the state of Iowa,” VFW quartermaster Denny Abel said. “They had close to 1,000 members, which would’ve been after World War II, when there were still World War I veterans and World War II veterans.”
Abel added the year in which Creston’s VFW was the largest is hard to pinpoint since the post burnt down in 1988 rendering many of its records lost forever. Abel said the changes in the withdrawal process from different wars has contributed to decline in membership.
“World War I and World War II were different times because they all left together, they all came home together when the war ended,” Abel said. “Whereas when you get into Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm and those, you get different people leaving at different times, so everybody came home at a different time.”
The change in how the military conducted deployment also changed between World War II and Korea.
“In Korea and Vietnam, you had a 12-month deployment and you came home and if you were a draftee, like I was, you came home and stayed home,” he said. “If you were an enlisted man, you might have a six or four-year tour and you might end up going to Vietnam two or three times. That’s why we had more veterans, per se, that were involved in the VFW and Legion.”
The oldest member of the Creston VFW is 101-year-old World War II veteran Ed Naven and the youngest is 33-year-old Iraq and Afghanistan veteran Adam Leith. Despite the variety of generations represented, there is still a decline in membership and volunteers.
“We always have a volunteer shortage,” Abel laughed. “I have a great group of people that I can call on to help, but nobody who will step up and grab the bull by the horns so to speak.”
Abel said he would need volunteers for Poppy Days this weekend, where the VFW will be in different stores around Creston from 8 a.m. to noon. The total number of volunteers would be 24 people each working two hour-shifts in that four-hour timeframe. The VFW will raise the flags at the cemetery Saturday morning.
Perhaps the biggest contributing factor in the VFW’s decline in membership and volunteers is mainly attributed to preoccupation with life’s other activities, Abel said.
“We have 22 members normally that come to our meetings, and I’m not going to say it’s because of patriotism or anything because we know we’re a patriotic community, but people have other things to do,” he said.
Abel added the company of non-veterans at Memorial Day services would give the VFW a greater sense of purpose in changing times.
“Everybody wants to go camping, everybody wants to go fishing, and I can go along with that, but you can take an hour out of your whole weekend and go to a service where the military spends the time so we don’t feel that we’re just doing this for ourselves,” he said. “We don’t want participants so much as we want a crowd of people to be there.”
The 72-year-old Abel said he needs more young membership, as does Iowa’s VFW as a whole.
“We’ve lost a lot of posts because our numbers are down and they don’t have younger members coming in to step up and keep the post going.”
Abel said the Afton post dissolved and merged with Creston because of this trend, but despite that, he has been reaching out to recruit veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan through word-of-mouth and newspaper advertisements.
“Every time I see a flag flying at a house that I don’t know the people, I’ll go up and thank them for flying the flag and ask them if they served,” he said. “I’ll see people with a hat on at Walmart or Hy-Vee or Fareway, go up, shake their hand, ‘Thank you for your service, are you a war veteran?’”
As veterans, Memorial Day is more significant to Abel and the VFW which stands in contrast to what many people use that three-day weekend for.
“This weekend is, for me, means more than a lot of weekends, because Memorial Day stands for people that have died in action, people that served their country and for family members,” Abel said.