VFW Post 1924 entertains, feeds to raise funds for programs

On any given night, you can find Chris Ingraham, commander of Veterans of Foreign Wars of the Charles E. Swisher Post 1924, and some of the 30 or so post member volunteers and auxiliary members staffing a dinner or entertainment event at the post.

From the popular Monday Burger Night to Saturday Night Karaoke, while the intent of the events are to entertain and engage with veterans, they also serve another purpose.

"I'll be honest, what we do is we use those as a way to help raise money for all of our programs," Ingraham said in a telephone interview. "One of the things that we do, and a lot of people don't know about and I try to get it out there, is every year there are two scholarship programs that we provide for Potter Junior High and Fallbrook Union High School."

But that's not all, the VFW has more than a dozen programs that it funds or provides to the community, including the recent Veterans Day Parade in Fallbrook.

"We get no sponsorships, no nothing to put that on," Ingraham said. "We put that on on our dime as our way of giving back to the community for the way they support us all year because they come to our breakfasts and they come to our dinners.

"Coming from the Midwest myself, Fallbrook really is small-town America. It really is," he said.

The post will award $900 in scholarship money Thursday, Nov. 21, to junior high and high school students at an open-to-the-public awards dinner for the winners of the Patriot Pen and Voice of Democracy essay contests.

Next May, they will give away $1,000 to a Fallbrook Union High School senior student, one of the largest scholarships offered in town.

Other programs the post hosts or provides include the Buddy Poppy Program; Teacher of the Year Program; Disaster Relief Program; North San Diego County Veterans Stand Down in Vista; Fallbrook Youth Activities Program with the Cub Scouts, Trail Life Scouting, Heritage Girls Scouting, Youth Baseball and the JROTC Naval Sea Cadet program; the VFW National Home Program; the Legislative Program; the Community Service Program and the Military Adopt-A-Unit Program.

"So all of these soup bar and salad bar things that we do that are all open to the public, they help us raise money for all of our programs," Ingraham said.

Unfortunately, Ingraham said, the membership totals at the post have been diminishing over the past couple of years as older members of the post begin to pass away and for other reasons.

"We've lost some guys that have been voices in the community, really hard workers in and around the post," Ingraham said. "As they get older, some of them they're retired, and I'll be honest, they can't live here. I've lost quite a few members recently, not to death, but because they had to move out of the state cause they couldn't afford to live here with a fixed income."

With dwindling numbers, it becomes more and more difficult to continue to fund the programs that are so important to the post.

That's why Ingraham encourages the community to come down to the post and enjoy the dinners and activities.

Without that support, they wouldn't be able to provide free dinners on Thanksgiving and Christmas, which they are preparing for now.

"Thanksgiving we do have coming up and obviously Christmas, we do between 250 and 300 dinners both of those days," Ingraham said. "And about 200 will be delivered. So, we deliver to veterans, the homeless, we work with the Foundation for Senior Care and they provide us a list of a lot of their clientele that are homebound and may not have a family. We drive all-around all the senior communities and we deliver a traditional Thanksgiving and traditional Christmas dinner to them.

"We did, I think, 203 deliveries and total we served about 260 people last year," Ingraham said.

This year, the post will host a Thanksgiving and Christmas Leftovers event the day after those two holidays for donations.

In order for the post to pass out free meals to those in need, Ingraham will continue to be at Friday night's Chili and Cornbread Night, $10 donation, Karaoke Night Saturday night until close and standing over the hot grill Monday night for Burger Night.

"Every Monday night we have Burger Night, and I cook that and that's turning into quite a following too," Ingraham said. "It used to be I'd only do about one or two trays of burgers and we constantly are going through about three or four trays of burgers now."

As more and more people come out to support the post, Ingraham said they can continue to do the work they were established to do.

"What we do is we help fight for veterans and veterans' rights and we make sure that veterans get all the benefits that they rightfully earned," he said.

VFW Post 124 is located at 1175 Old Stage Road in Fallbrook. To follow along with their weekly events, visit http://www.FallbrookVFW.org.

Jeff Pack can be reached by email at [email protected].