Disabled American Veterans, Department of Louisiana

SIGN ON HIGHWAY

            On July 22, 2011, the MSO van visited Lafayette with Hershey Vaughn and Christopher Diederich from Florida coming in to interview our veterans.  Rather than have them stand around in the hot and humid weather, our Commander Miguel Macias set us up in the spacious Knights of Columbus hall at the St. Edmonds Church.  There were plenty of chairs and tables and we had coffee plus donuts in the morning for our
“customers” and their wives.  At noon we had hamburgers, potato salad, chips, and a Coca Cola dispensing machine for lunchtime.  All in all, it was an almost gala occasion, with many veterans visiting among old comrades they hadn’t seen in a long time.

            We set the NSOs up in a separate room with their laptops and they interviewed the veterans one by one.  In total we had 56 veterans, 4 widows, and 3 dependents come to the hall for assistance.  The overflow that we had was given a rain-check and told to come to our local CSO office.  All but one has been counseled since then.  It was a great recruiting tool for us as we signed 6 new members and got 2 volunteers for van driver.  We had a great turnout of members who all pitched in with the cooking, clerking, washing, and sweeping.  We also had great local publicity from both of our TV stations and our efforts were featured in the evening news.  The Chapter members who participated left at the end of the day with a real feeling of camaraderie, looking forward to doing it again next year.  Chapter 2 demonstrated why they are a premier Chapter of the Department when it comes to veterans service work.