KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) is proud to announce the launch of its TikTok channel, joining nine fellow veteran-serving organizations as part of TikTok’s new “Veteran Voices” initiative. Veteran Voices focuses on key challenges afflicting the military and veteran community – mental health, affordable housing, and employment. Together, these trusted organizations will leverage TikTok’s influential community of creators and engage audiences to provide critical support to those in need.

“In this day and age, many veterans aren’t going to walk into a VFW Post, so you have to meet them where they are,” said VFW National Commander Al Lipphardt. “Nothing beats a warm handshake and looking someone square in the eye to let them know you care about them. But if we want to have that chance, we need to let them know first we exist. In joining TikTok’s Veteran Voices campaign, we now have a platform to connect with service members and young veterans where they like to link up, consuming the content they care about.”

Veteran-serving organizations supporting the Veteran Voices initiative alongside the VFW are: America’s Warrior Partnership, Elizabeth Dole Foundation, Independence Fund, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, Student Veterans of America (SVA), Team Rubicon, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) and Wounded Warrior Project.

In addition to providing comprehensive training tailored specifically for nonprofits, which includes guidance on LIVE, content creation, and platform safety to maximize their impact and reach on the platform, TikTok will also be launching a newly updated donation sticker this fall, allowing users to support the organizations above. This feature will empower its online community to contribute directly to causes they support and create a community dedicated to making a meaningful impact.

One in three U.S. veterans report using TikTok monthly based on data available via GWI Core, measured in Q2 2024 among internet users ages 16-64. Through continued collaboration with nonprofit organizations, creators, and our TikTok community, we look forward to continuing to raise awareness and foster a community where veterans are supported – during Veterans Day and beyond.

Be sure to follow the VFW on TikTok and help us raise awareness and make an even bigger impact #FORVETERANS.

Volunteers at the 125th VFW National Convention in Louisville, Kentucky, participated in a Uniting to Combat Hunger seed-packing event aimed at helping families affected by food insecurity. Those seeds were sent across the country to distributors that provide healthy and fresh produce to those in need.

As part of the initiative to address the issue, volunteers on July 27 packed 4,000 seed packets that were distributed to VFW Posts and Auxiliaries, as well as community gardens. A partnership with the Society of Saint Andrew, a Virginia-based nonprofit that provides hunger relief to communities in the U.S., has yielded about 72,000 pounds, or nearly 2.9 million servings of fresh produce, for communities in need.

VFW’s partnership with Humana has garnered more than 5.6 million meals for families in the United States. In 2024, 158 VFW Posts and Auxiliaries in 41 states participated. VFW Foundation Director of Donor Relations Richard Freiburghouse said that the Uniting to Combat Hunger campaign exhibits VFW’s commitment to serving veterans and their communities, as well as addressing one of the most pressing issues facing many veterans.

“The core goals of the Uniting to Combat Hunger program are to alleviate food insecurity in communities around the country and engage with VFW members participating in meaningful service projects,” Freiburghouse said. “By leveraging our networks and resources, VFW Posts can make a significant impact, often involving veterans and their families in these efforts.”

VETERANS AT ‘SERIOUS RISK’
For 2025’s Uniting to Combat Hunger campaign, VFW and Humana will partner with Volunteers of America. The program will focus on helping homeless veterans overcome food insecurity.

Tracy Nolan, senior vice president of Humana MarketPoint, said the health care insurance company and VFW have a long-standing commitment to veterans, service members and their families.

“Food insecurity and homelessness are both serious risks for suicide and other health issues,” said Nolan, a guest speaker at the 125th VFW National Convention in Louisville. “We continue our collaboration with the VFW on the Uniting to Combat Hunger campaign to ensure our nation’s veterans have access to healthy foods and resources that can help decrease the risk of common health problems – both physical and mental.”

1-IN-9 VETERANS AFFECTED
According to Feeding America, 1-in-9 working-age veterans are food insecure. The organization also claims that about 1-in-4 active-duty service members were food insecure in 2020, and about 1.2 million low-income veterans use the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

As of 2021, 12.8 percent of U.S. households were considered food insecure, according to the Department of Agriculture.

For more information about the Uniting to Combat Hunger initiative, visit vfw.org/UTCH.

VFW Post 5423 and its Auxiliary conducted a food drive on Aug. 31 for a school district’s pantry that feeds Mountain Home, Idaho, residents in need.

Post and Auxiliary members set out to aid the Bear Necessities Pantry, located at a local alternative school. Volunteers from the Post and Auxiliary collected more than 2,260 pounds of nonperishable goods from patrons of a local Walmart through an eight-hour period. The donations should provide food to approximately 160 families and last the pantry for about six months.

Ashlie Lambrecht, a Bennett Mountain Community School coordinator, said she had never seen the pantry so full of food after the donation.

“The VFW’s effort in raising over 2,000 pounds of food for our school’s pantry went beyond all expectations,” Lambrecht said. “We are incredibly grateful and proud to be recipients of such generous support.”

About 8.6 percent of Idaho’s population are veterans. About 23 percent of Idaho veterans live in Mountain Home, which is located about 12 miles northeast of Mountain Home Air Force Base. The base is home to more than 6,000 family members, 4,500 active-duty military members and 650 civilian employees.

For the past 13 years, a VFW Post in the Hawkeye State has helped raise more than $60,000 for local eighth-grade students who participate in an annual trip to Washington, D.C. To do this, the Post enlists the students to work breakfasts twice a month.

In 2023, Post 1977 in Decorah, Iowa, raised more than $9,000 for 63 students who volunteered during breakfasts at the Decorah All Vets Club. Students this year will work on the first and third Sundays of each month during the school year.

“It doesn’t pay for their trip, but it’s money the parents don’t need to part with,” Post 1977 Quartermaster Mark Stockdale said to the Decorah Leader. “And they learn the value of working hard, and I enjoy working with young adults – giving them directions and teaching them what they need to know.”

Eighth-grade students who participate learn food service tasks and etiquette. Students serve food, bus tables and wash dishes. Stockdale also highlighted the importance of challenging work and mentorship that could help them with jobs in the future.

“Bringing in eighth-grade kids to work a breakfast has many benefits – not just for the kids but for us as well,” Stockdale said to the Leader. “The eighth graders provide us with great support in that they work the breakfasts, and they learn skills they can use throughout their lives.”

VFW Post 7689 in Martinsburg, Pennsylvania, donated $2,500 toward new helmets for the local high school football team to enhance safety measures in sports.

Post Commander Doug Warmath presented the donation during Central High School’s second football game at home in Martinsburg in mid-September.

“The safety of our students is a top priority,” Kayla Myers, president of the QB Club, told the Morrisons Cove Herald in Martinsburg. “We are incredibly grateful to the VFW and the broader community for coming together to ensure our athletes are well-equipped.”

The donation stemmed from the Spring Cove School District administrators recognizing the need for more proactive safety measures, though unable to cover the new unforeseen costs of implementing new safety standards for football teams in the district.

VFW Post 7689’s contribution to the district now allows Central High School to purchase the necessary amount of helmets to meet the safety standards lobbied by the local school district and its members.

The check presentation by Warmath on behalf of Post 7689 also alluded to the large role the community in and around Martinsburg played in helping raise the funds for its local high school football program, according to the Herald.

“This is what community is all about,” Myers told the Herald. “It’s amazing to see everyone come together for the benefit of our students.”

This article is featured in the 2024 October issue of Checkpoint. If you’re a VFW member and don’t currently receive the VFW Checkpoint, please contact VFW magazine at magazine@vfw.org.

Since March 2019, VFW Post 2667 and its Auxiliary have donated more than 15,000 pounds of food to local pantries around their community in Newnan, Georgia.

Their efforts began when Auxiliary secretary and historian Janet Alford joined several others in tasking Auxiliary and VFW members to bring a jar of peanut butter to each monthly meeting at the Post.

“They all thought it was a great idea,” Alford said. “We started out slowly until the members finally remembered to bring their donations. We collected 28 jars of peanut butter in our first month, and then received about 10-11 jars for several months.”

By 2021, the Post had added canned foods, jelly and birthday kits to go along with their initial donations of peanut butter to several food pantries around their community.

To date, the Post and its Auxiliary has donated 6,858 jars of peanut butter, 2,253 jars of jelly, as well as 1,004 canned foods and 186 birthday kits, which includes alternative, self-made cake mixes, to the local Salvation Army, The I-58 Mission, Bridging the Gap and One Roof.

“They are very grateful for our donations and many times we arrive to find they are completely out of peanut butter and/or jelly,” Alford said. “A jar of peanut butter can make a difference in a family missing a meal and is one of the most needed items at a food pantry.”

The Post and its Auxiliary plan to continue to collect donations from its members each month to distribute to local food pantries in the area, an effort that has prompted positive feedback in the community.

“Our local newspaper publishes our photo of delivering the donations each month and this brings not only attention to our local VFW giving back to the community on a regular basis, but gives each food pantry recognition,” Alford said. “While out in the public, many members have been thanked and recognized for our work in the community.”

VFW magazine continues its “Destination Post Series” this month. The series will feature 125 VFW Posts located in sought-after tourist destinations. Featured VFW Posts are those that make a real difference in the communities in which the Posts are located. This month’s article takes VFW magazine to Whidbey Island, Washington.

Sprawled along the blueness of Puget Sound, Whidbey Island is a gangly island about 30 miles north of Seattle and nestled between the Olympic Peninsula and the I-5 corridor of western Washington, commonly known as the Purple Heart Trail. Known for its own trails, historic military forts and picturesque water views with orca sightings, the island also is home to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, making it a small but vibrant veterans community.

POST HOSTS A CAMPGROUND
At the heart of this veterans community is VFW Post 7392, chartered on May 12, 1946, and currently the fifth largest VFW Post in the state. Located on the northern part of the island in Oak Harbor, about a half-mile away from the naval air station grounds, the Post is home to more than 1,000 veterans, of which 870 are life members.

Serving as a hub for the island’s veterans population, the Post offers one of the largest canteens in the area, a full-time restaurant and bar, as well as weekly events, such as bingo and poker nights. But it is the Post’s 5-acre campgrounds that brings in the most amount of veterans each year, a luxury only one other VFW Post in the state shares.

For Post 7392 Commander Julie Doran, it was the Post’s campgrounds that initially drew her into the embrace of the VFW family on the island seven years ago, when her family was forced out by their landlord after a decade of renting from them.

“As a mother of four, we were on the verge of being homeless,” said Doran, a Navy veteran who joined VFW in 2005 at Post 1473 in Spirit Lake, Idaho. “We owned a large trailer, so I asked around, and a veteran from Post 7392 told me about the campgrounds.”

Doran, who still lives on the campgrounds with her family, which includes her husband, a Navy veteran and Auxiliary member himself, has since become camp host, helping
veterans like herself find a place to stay as they transition from the military or navigate hardships.

“It is my way to pay it forward,” said Doran, who alongside her husband, also serves as caretaker of the campgrounds, which includes a veterans memorial garden, showers and a V-dome picnic area.

“When I first got to Post 7392, I realized how active and amazing these people were. I had not seen what a real VFW Post was until I came over to this Post. I used to think it was just a hangout for older veterans. But they opened my eyes, and I saw all the work they were doing in the community.”

‘ENGAGING’ THE COMMUNITY
A fixture in and around Whidbey Island, Post 7392 members remain active in the community by conducting service projects that include monthly Adopt-a-Road cleanups, as well as involvement with local schools and their JROTC programs. They also host Memorial and Veterans Day ceremonies, and participate in all annual parades in the island, oftentimes fostering relationships with local businesses and organizations by setting up booths at local events to better help engage with the public.

Past Post 7392 Commander and retired Navy veteran Bill Thiel, an NJROTC high school instructor since 2000, believes being active in and around the community dispels the notion that a VFW Post is just about old veterans sitting around doing nothing.

“Engaging in the community enhances getting people involved with our Post, and that is why we also invite non-members to the Post for lunch, dinner or some of the other activities we host every week,” said Thiel, a 2024 VFW Department of Washington Teacher of the Year recipient at Oak Park High School on Whidbey Island.

“Being well-known in the community, not just at the school or other businesses we deal with, also allows our retired military who work on base at NAS Whidbey Island to find a place for great camaraderie and one they can call their own.”

This very exposure, and the ripples it stirs among younger veterans around the island considering joining the VFW, is what allows Post 7392 to continue to build and grow its veterans community, according to Post Sr. Vice Commander Bob Mador.

“By being active in the community, we are visible to the veterans that might need our help, in one way or another,” Mador said. “Our exposure will help get our programs, such as service officer support, hospital support and veteran relief support, the recognition that will help veterans know where to go.”

MOTORCYCLES AND GUITARS
Post 7392 also offers engaging, unique ways for its membership to connect and build camaraderie, having both an active chapter of the VFW Riders, as well as a new chapter of the nationally renowned Guitars for Vets.

Since its recent inception in April 2022, the Guitars for Vets chapter at Post 7392, one of more than 110 chapters across the country, has welcomed several veterans who have turned to music as a means to cope with their PTSD while learning to play music. The program gives participating veterans a guitar to practice for a minimum of 10 lessons, before gifting them a brand new guitar and accessories once the lessons are completed.

Alongside the VFW Riders group, which promotes the public visibility of the VFW, its programs, and the VFW National Home in Eaton Rapids, Michigan, through community service and participation in veterans service events, these groups afford members of Post 7392 unique ways to stay active and serve their community. They also cater to the diverse needs of the Post’s members, according to Post Adjutant Everett Wardlaw.

“No two veterans have had the same experiences, nor do they have the same outlets,” Warsaw said. “Having multiple alternative programs provides many opportunities for veterans to support one another and build camaraderie. There are many ways one can lose their thoughts. Guitars for Vets provides a musical forum, and the Riders go out and ride. It is connecting veterans to veterans for peer support, and that is the goal.”

For more information, be sure to follow VFW Post 7392 on Facebook at VFW Post 7392 Oak Harbor, Washington. And if you find yourself in Whidbey Island, stop in at Post 7392 located at 3037 Goldie Rd.

This article is featured in the 2024 October issue of VFW magazine, and was written by Ismael Rodriguez Jr., senior writer for VFW magazine.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – “Throughout our storied history, times of challenge and adversity have brought forth the opportunity for VFW and VFW Auxiliary members to demonstrate the true spirit of our great organizations. Hurricane Helene recently presented us with yet another opportunity, and once again, our community united in the essence of our existence to answer the call of service to others.

My deepest gratitude goes out to all VFW and Auxiliary members, and our supporters for the time, supplies, financial contributions and forward efforts in assisting those whose lives were suddenly thrust into devastation and despair in the wake of this natural disaster. Your tireless efforts and support are not only providing ongoing, much-needed relief to so many, but serve as a meaningful contributor toward healing and eventually, rebuilding.

From Brookhaven, Mississippi, to Kernersville, North Carolina, you have been a source of light for many in their darkest hour. Still serving despite the challenges, the physical and emotional toll, and at times, the danger, your continued willingness to put others first is truly an inspiration and represents the heart and soul of our organizations.

While our Hurricane Helene relief efforts will continue, we now turn our eye to Hurricane Milton as it bears down on Florida’s west coast and is expected to bring yet a new wave of needed support. God be with those in the anticipated path and I know VFW and Auxiliary members are standing at the ready for the call to serve once more.

Again, I thank you all for your many contributions, and for your strength and selflessness as we work to provide our fellow Americans with a hand up. Veterans of Foreign Wars and its Auxiliary members epitomize the mantra of ‘Believe in what you do – Do what you believe in … Follow Me!’ I could not be any prouder to call you Comrades, Brothers and Sisters.”

VFW Life member Sam Baker is #StillServing as a member of VFW Post 6683 in Enterprise, Alabama, and by devoting his time to the VFW and several other local organizations.

Baker not only serves his Post as adjutant, he also volunteers as a pilot for the Friends of Army Aviation and is the senior vice president of the Aviation Center Chapter of the Army Aviation Association of America. He also organizes the annual dinner fundraiser for the Enterprise High School Junior ROTC Wildcat Battalion.

“Supporting young cadets is important to me,” he said.

Additionally, Baker serves on the boards of the Army Aviation Heritage Foundation and the Foundation for Hospital Art. As a member of the Above the Best Silver Chapter of the United States Army Warrant Officers Association, he also interviews and helps recruit warrant officer candidates from around the country and in Enterprise.

“I want to show that military retirees can still contribute to our communities and demonstrate the importance of service to my grandchildren,” Baker said.

WASHINGTON – This Sunday, Sept. 29, we proudly celebrate VFW Day, marking the 125th anniversary of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). This extraordinary milestone is not only a testament to our rich history but also a reflection of the unwavering dedication of veterans across our nation and around the world.

Since our founding in 1899, the VFW has been a beacon of hope and assistance for millions of veterans and their families. We have fought for the rights, recognition and benefits that they earned and deserve. Our organization stands united in its mission of advocacy, service, camaraderie and honoring those who have sacrificed so much for our freedom.

As we look back on 125 years of service, we also look forward to the future. The challenges facing veterans today are ever evolving, and it is our duty to adapt and continue to be fierce advocates for those who came before us and those coming after us. Together, we will ensure that every veteran receives the care and support they need, and that their sacrifices are never forgotten.

On this special day, I call upon the more than 1.4 million members of the VFW and its Auxiliary to reflect on our shared achievements and renew our commitment to one another. Our strength lies in our unity and, together, we can continue to make significant impacts in the lives of veterans and their families. May the spirit of the VFW – our devotion to one another and to the communities we serve – remain unbreakable.

Thank you for your service, your comradeship, and your support to our great organization. Here’s to the next 125 years of making a difference, honoring our heroes who have answered the call to defend our nation and ensuring that their voices are heard.

Let us all celebrate the legacy.

Al Lipphardt
Commander-in-Chief
Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW)