Mayor presents new lease to veterans

Posted

As part of the 75th anniversary of the local chapter of Veterans of Foreign Wars, members of the VFW and American Legion were presented a new lease from the City of Swainsboro on land they were originally leased in 1948. In May of that year, the City Council agreed to provide the organization a site for construction of a chapter center. In commenting, Mayor Charles Schwabe explained, “The only problem was that a lease never was actually presented to the club. Last year after meeting with a group of veterans, we started playing “history detective” and found in the minutes of the May 1948 city council meeting all the information we needed to generate a new lease. Council promptly passed a motion to do just that, now the organization is set for the next 100 years.”
When the local VFW was begun in 1946, over 50 returning WWII veterans signed the original charger which is displayed at the center.
Schwabe added, “It’s an inspiring thing to see the signatures of all these young men who went to war then came home to become the leaders of this community and build a future for us all, and today this group is still one of the most active civic groups we have.”