VFW post faces move amid times of struggle

There’s no one reason why VFW Post 1474 has to move out of the building that it’s called home for nearly 50 years.

The Hillyard veterans organization can’t pay its bills anymore, much less the nearly $80,000 it owes in back taxes. The assessor, the IRS, the state Gambling Commission – Post 1474 owes them all.

“If we could get the fines knocked off, we could manage it,” post Commander Tony Rossi said.

Maybe, but the post would still have to move out of the 15,000-square-foot building it once owned at 3004 W. Queen. To avoid foreclosure, the post signed the building over to the bank in 2001 and has leased it since then.

It’s just too much room for the post’s dwindling membership of mostly World War II, Korea and Vietnam veterans.

The members will meet in two weeks to discuss their options, which include bankruptcy, Rossi said.

“We will not lose our charter just because we’re moving,” he said.

The post almost had to move out in 2003, but Cantu Investments bought the building and gave the post a big break on its lease.

After that, the post was hoping for a new start, with new music on Friday and Saturday nights to attract younger members. But the writing was on the wall, literally, as the names of lifetime members moved from one plaque in the clubroom to another, the one honoring deceased members.

Just this month, the honor guard was mustered five times at the funerals of members who passed away. Each had served their nation in a war zone far away, a requirement for membership into the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The requirement is contributing to the post’s decline in rolls, said Rossi.

Recent events also have conspired against the post – the state smoking ban was enacted in December, and Queen Street has been under construction for about six weeks, making Hillyard navigation too much for some of the post’s 1,000 members and auxiliary.

Bingo, once a big moneymaker, ended May 5 as a result of too much competition from other gambling establishments.

So the veterans are looking for a new bivouac, a smaller place, one they can afford, with a bar and a pool table, perhaps. In the meantime, the veterans are grateful to their landlord, Dan Cantu, for allowing them to stay while he remodels the building around them to make it more attractive to a new tenant or buyer.

“I’m trying to let them hang out until then,” Cantu said. “They just don’t need and can’t afford a building that size anymore.”

The utility bill alone averages $2,200 to $2,500 a month, Quartermaster Bev Autrey said. “We’re several thousand (dollars) past due.”

Post 1474 was first chartered in 1934 and moved into its current building in the 1950s. Nobody could say when for sure.

The post has members whose fathers and grandfathers also were members.

They are proud of their community service to Hillyard, which includes Christmas baskets for needy families, an Easter egg hunt in Harmon Park and Halloween and Christmas parties for neighborhood children.

Asked what he recalls as the post’s most significant event, Rossi pointed to a glass-encased flag that the 92nd Civil Engineer Squadron brought back from Iraq recently. Then he remembered the wake for Jerry Ogle.

Ogle, a Korean War veteran who once played with the Spokane Indians and drove a beer truck for August Distributors, died in July 1996.

“The place was filled beyond capacity,” Rossi said.

No doubt its occupants were, too.