OCR Text |
Show H legion (Copy for This Dep irtmnt Supplied by th American Legion News Service.) CARE FOR ORPHANS AND DISABLED MEN The American Legion will raise a fund of $r,000,000 or more for orphaned or-phaned children of the World war and Indigent and disabled former service men in a nation-wide campaign to be launched soon, It was announced at national headquarters of the Legion recently. President Coolidge, at the request of National Commander James A. Drain of the Legion, accepted the honorary chairmanship of the Legion's national committee to raise the fund. The endowment fund program was given authorization by the sixth national na-tional convention of the Legion at St Paul, pending approval of the plan by the finance committee, which was given at a meeting of the committee at national headquarters. The urgent need of raising the fund Immediately was pointed out by Mark T. McKee, Detroit. Mich., who is a member of the Legion's child welfare committee, tie declared that the existing ex-isting facilities of the Legion for caring car-ing for the orphaned and helpless children chil-dren of former service men who were killed or died as a result of their war service are overcrowded. At this time the Legion maintains a children's billet bil-let at Otter Lake, Mich., and has one under construction at Independence, Kans. "There are 5,000 children of dead World war veterans who need care right now," Mr. McKee said, "out of a total of 35,000 war waifs. As time goes on there will be more. These are veterans' bureau figures. Just the other day a man left four children at the veterans' bureau, children of a deceased de-ceased war veteran, with a request that they be cared' for. ' The bureau turned the children over to us. Somehow Some-how we will provide for them, yet our present facilities will stand for no expansion." ex-pansion." In referring to the proposed fund, Commander Drain declared : "The Legion's Le-gion's endowment fund campaign will be a success ; we will raise more than the set amount and the campaign will have a greatly beneficial effect upon the morale of the Legtaa and increase our membership for the comiagr year to a million members. We must look close to home and see the great underlying under-lying misery caused by the great conflict. con-flict. We must help the disabled man. He is our first obligation and he needs us now. The American Legion must keep faith with its fallen comrades by seeing that the helpless children are not deprived of the opportunities that are rightfully theirs, because their fathers fa-thers were killed fighting for their country. 'Bind up the wounds of the disabled and care for the widows and orphans' must be our slogan." . The Legion will petition congress to make a technical change in the recently re-cently passed adjusted compensation act to the effect that former service persons may allot their compensation to patriotic organizations chartered by congress, .the money to be used for child welfare and disabled veteran care. The Legion would use such a fund toward their endowment program if congress sanctions the proposal, Legion Le-gion officials declared. |