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No. 18 Vol. 8
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August 2022
United States Navy Veteran Saves North Haledon’s American Legion Post No. 428
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By Steve Sears t first, United States Navy veteran George Van Der Wal was not a member of North Haledon’s American Legion Post No. 428. He’d been asked to join many times over 40 years, but didn’t. “I’d always been interested in veterans, but I declined joining,” he says. Two of his coworkers at his part-time job at the Department of Public Works recycling plant, Peter Botbyl and Louis Severi, themselves American Legion Post No. 428 members, asked him to join. “They came up to me and they said, ‘Give me one reason why you don’t want to join?’ And I couldn’t give them a reason. So, I took a membership application, filled it out, gave my $30, and joined.” Today, he is Commander of the ship, and saved the organization by raising its dwindling membership. “At one time, there was a lot of members after World War II,” Van Der Wal says. “As time went on, the membership got less and less and less. Around 2017 and 2018, we got down to less than 20 members. Once you reach 15 or less, you basically get suspended from Passaic County and the state, and you lose your charter. They don’t recognize you as a Post because you have to have a certain number of members of that Post.” In his first year as Commander, Van Der Wal, who served in the Navy from September 1964 to September 1968, tripled the membership number of Post No. 428. “I saw ours getting down to 16 or 17 paid members, so I decided to increase the membership rather than go into default. You don’t have an organization without members, that’s the bottom line.” Van Der Wal first started going to the county meetings with a few other members, which are held the third Tuesday of every month. “They got used to seeing my face there. And then I was told by the Judge Advocate that we (Post No. 428) were getting down to that critical 15-member mark. ‘Once you reach that number,’ he said, ‘you’re in trouble.’” Van Der Wal, at that time the Chaplain of Post No. 428, shortly thereafter was voted into the role of Commander after the pass-
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George Van Der Wal (courtesy of George Van Der Wal) ing in 2019 of former Commander, 93-year-old Dulio Alvino. Van Der Wal has also been Passaic County Commander the past two years. Once at the helm, Van Der Wal took action. During his Tuesday and Wednesday shifts at the DPW, he asked everybody who entered the building if they were ever in the armed forces and, if they were, if they’d like to join the American Legion. “The majority of the guys that I got into the American Legion were age 55 to age 90,” Van Der Wal says. “These are guys that were in World War II or after World War II. A lot of them joined.” Van Der Wal was able to elevate Post No. No. 428’s membership to 49. “We picked up two new members this past Memorial Day weekend,” he says. “They saw an article in the continued on page 4
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