North Carolina Post 317 has received $145,000 in donations, including from the National Emergency Fund, and equally important donations of labor and materials.
After Hurricane Helene left close to six feet of water and two feet of mud inside Davis-Sexton American Legion Post 317 in Marshall, N.C., members of the post wondered if they would ever reopen the building.
But after an influx of donations – both financial and in materials and labor – the post is close to reopening. And its goal is to assist others impacted by last fall’s hurricane.
On Sept. 27, U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards was on hand as the post hosted live music by the Carolina Boxcars. And a project that was initially expected to cost $265,000 but has come in more than $100,000 under that because of donations was even closer to being finished.
“One day we were standing around wondering if we were ever going to rebuild it,” Post 317 Finance Officer Mickey Coulson said. “And the next day I got a whole crew of volunteers and a little material. And the next week it would happen again. And all of the sudden we realized this might get done. It’s amazing that it happened in the manner that it did. I would have never bet on that.”
Coulson said area residents had evacuated and that post members thought their building had been destroyed. They then heard about the flooding and the mud inside the post, some of which had made it inside the post’s gun safe. The building’s back door had been blown off, and most of the furniture had been swept into the river.
“We first didn’t think the building was going to be able to be saved,” said Coulson.
Coulson said the post’s neighbors, general contractors Every Angle, had made a commitment to revitalize the town and provided an engineer to determine if Post 317 was salvageable. A price tag of $265,000 – $80,000 alone just to repair the basement and make the building’s structure safe enough to rebuild upon – was estimated for the renovation.
“We only had about $20,000 after the flood,” Coulson said. “So, we were thinking it was going to take us years to come back.”
The post set up a GoFundMe page, which brought in some money. But then word of the post’s situation started making it through North Carolina and beyond. Support came from as far away as California and New York, from Legion posts and other organizations throughout the nation.
“As soon as the word got out to The American Legion Family, that’s where things really started happening for us,” Coulson said. “All of the sudden, volunteers started coming from everywhere. We got different organizations from all over the area and further away. A volunteer group out of Paul Smith’s College in New York. We started having church groups show up from everywhere. An organization in Tennessee, God’s Warehouse, they donated material.
“We’d get the materials in, and the volunteers would show up, and things would happen. And boy, were we blessed it sort of fell in that way.”
Post 317 also applied for and received a $10,000 grant from the Legion’s National Emergency Fund. “That’s immensely valuable for all of us to think about,” Coulson said. “We couldn’t have done any of this without that help and without the volunteers.”
All told, the post raised $145,000, which will be enough to complete the renovation. The effort to bring the post back also has had a side benefit.
“We’re getting a lot of help from a lot of people, and it’s bringing other veterans in the area back into the Legion here,” Coulson said. “We’ve picked up several new members just because of our working effort rebuilding. We’re going to come back stronger than ever.”
One reason Post 317 wanted to be up and running as quickly as possible is to be able to assist others impacted by Hurricane Helene.
“We’ll recover quicker than the rest of the local community will,” Coulson said. “And there’s so many local businesses in the area that just won’t recover. The quicker we get up and running, the quicker we can help our local community there. That’s what we’re trying to do right now.”
- Emergency