Past national commander honored for changing the world

Harry W. Colmery changed the world. The American Legion past national commander wrote the originial draft of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 – the GI Bill – which propelled the United States to superpower status, launching an era of U.S. prosperity that continues today.

Colmery can be credited for such phenomena as averting economic disaster when millions of U.S. troops returned home from World War II, democratizing higher education, making home ownership affordable for average Americans, driving forward racial equality, establishing an all-volunteer military, revolutionizing health care for veterans, and turning the American dream into an American reality for generations.

Until 2013, however, Colmery’s legacy was hardly remembered in Topeka, Kan., where he lived and worked for more than 60 years. On June 22, 72 years after he watched President Franklin D. Roosevelt sign the GI Bill into law, Colmery was immortalized. More than 200 veterans, military personnel, family members and business leaders attended dedication ceremonies for the Harry Colmery Memorial Plaza near the the Kansas state capitol building. The plaza features a statue of Colmery saluting men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces, with a panel of bronze figures behind him depicting the civilian professions they would assume after discharge.

The American Legion’s Department of Kansas worked with volunteers and the Colmery family to raise funds, design and construct the memorial park.

"Harry Colmery represents the best of what it means to be an American veteran, an engaged citizen and servant to others," National Commander Dale Barnett told the crowd. "(He) saw it as his personal duty to fulfill what we in The American Legion call an ‘individual obligation to community, state and nation.’ He fulfilled that duty at every level – from his local church to Boy Scouts, the Topeka Chamber of Commerce, the state Bar Association and The American Legion, to name just a few. And, as he was doing so, Harry Colmery just happened to shift the course of human history."

American Legion Past National Commander and current Department of Kansas Adjutant Jimmie Foster said, "He was a living example of every founding principle of The American Legion – support for veterans, strong national security, mentorship for youth and American patriotism."

Now, his legacy is cast in bronze so that future generations will understand what one individual can accomplish for his community, state and nation.

"In all the years that our family has witnessed grateful veterans expressing their appreciation for the GI Bill… and how it transformed their lives, we simultaneously wondered how to preserve that story so that it might inspire others," Mina Steen, a granddaughter who worked closely with the memorial committee throughout the project, told a crowd at the ceremony. "Our prayer is that it will stand over time, commemorating a great human effort and political decision that served our veterans and country ever so well. Grandfather would be very pleased."