Youth in focus at Fletcher, Okla., Post 306
Near the end of each academic year in Fletcher, Okla., the local school provides a bus and driver for members of Chandler-Bilyeu American Legion Post 306 to traverse rural Comanche County to lead Memorial Day ceremonies.
“We do 11 cemeteries between 8:30 and 1:30,” Post 306 Adjutant and Department of Oklahoma Vice Commander Jimmy Ching says. “These are all country cemeteries … if we didn’t do it, they would be forgotten.”
The 88-member post does not have a bar or restaurant, but it does have a home full of history, awards and pride in its youth programs. Originally located on the sprawling Wichita Wildlife Refuge, the former Civilian Conservation Corps barracks was moved in 1954 to the town of Fletcher, which is surrounded by small public schools.
Post 306 Historian Lenn Sovo, who spent 23 years as a middle school teacher in nearby Elgin, is proud that the post had back-to-back Department of Oklahoma Oratorical Contest champions in 2014 and 2015 – one from Sterling and one from Elgin – who went on to compete at the National Oratorical Contest in Indianapolis. “We also send seven to 10 boys to the Oklahoma American Legion Boys State program – from Fletcher, Elgin, Apache, Sterling, Cyril, Cement and Lawton,” says Sovo, who stays in touch with many of his students who, with his encouragement, went on to serve in the U.S. military.
The post, chartered in 1947 and named in honor of two young men who died fighting in the European Theater of World War II – Tech Sgt. Allen Arthur Chandler, a B-17 radio gunner, and Pvt. Delvin Bilyeu, a young infantry soldier who was killed late in the war, February 1945, in Germany – also provides Veterans Days ceremonies at area schools. Members of the post also help with a local reading program through the Fletcher Elementary School.
On the walls of the post home, fully remodeled two years ago, hang many department awards, including one for distinguished service from the National Americanism Commission, another as 2010 National Emergency Fund Post of the Year for relief work the post provided during ice storms that winter, along with department awards for membership excellence and many others.
Amid the awards, a framed Preamble to The American Legion Constitution, flags, banners and everything else one would expect to find in a post made from an old wooden CCC barracks are the black-and-white faces of two teen-aged soldiers – Chandler and Bilyeu – who will never age, forever representing young people from their part of Oklahoma who went to war so that future generations could pursue their dreams in freedom, a lesson Post 306 is more than willing to share with students of any age.