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 Washington Legion Post Sells Dinners For Funding

BOBBY ARDOIN

Editor/Consulting Writer

Bar-b-que dinner sales and cook-off events are the primary fund raisers available for the American Legion Post in Washington to launch major repair efforts for their century-old building that contains treasured artifacts of area military veterans.

Even those pairs of functions, says 209 Post member Todd Darbonne, have not yet provided enough revenue to tackle some of the structural issues associated with the renovation efforts.

“We have to change the roof and that estimate right now is about $25,000. That’s just one of the projects that we have in front of us right now,” Darbonne says.

Darbonne said the bar-b-que dinners (half a chicken or pork steaks) sold with sides at the Post headquarters on La. 10 for $12 normally on the first Saturday of every month, account for a limited but consistent funding stream for repairers.

However Post members still need more participation from the area public.

“Last month we prepared about 100 dinners and sold about a third of that. We wound up donating the dinners we didn’t sell to The Refinery men’s shelter in Opelousas,” said Darbonne.

The dinners at $12 each, are available again starting at 11 am this Saturday, said Darbonne.

“Our American Legion building right now is in pretty bad shape.and right now we need a little support in order to follow through with the plans for our renovations. We also had an auction in conjunction with the cook off event in April that gave us more funding,” Darbonne said.

Darbonne said there is an abundance of war veteran memorabilia stored at the Legion Post.

“We have a lot of important information and photographs of veterans in the area who served in different wars including information of all of them along with those who have died in battle,” Darbonne said.

Darbonne said the Post building, which was formerly a residence, is also an historical landmark that was building around 1920.

“Right now we have other problems that include a dwindling membership. We couldn’t do what we needed to due several years ago due to COVID and now we are also an aging group that has limited funds and resources,” Darbonne added.       

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