Kansas Historical Society
HARRY W. COLMERY: ARCHITECT OF THE GI BILL A 1937 magazine profile of American Legion National Commander Harry W. Colmery contained a prophetic observation: “In the preparation of law cases, his associates say, he is at his best in arranging complicated masses of detail and dovetailing them to fit into a sequence that has, on occasion, flabbergasted opposing counsel by the thoroughness by which it was assembled.”
the lives of millions, for generations to come, and change the course of American history. Colmery was called upon to assemble a collection of legislative priorities into one moral imperative – a GI Bill of Rights – that would strike at the heart of a nation still awaiting the outcome of World War II, at a time when communities across the map were filling fast with men and women who had come home from military service wounded, sick, destitute and psychologically reeling from the effects of their sacrifices.
Six years after the profile appeared in The American Legion Monthly, that particular Colmery characteristic was employed in a way that would improve 2