Department of New York’s Bill Clancy III elected to Sons of The American Legion’s top office.
A member of the Detachment of New York has been elected as 2025-2026 Sons of The American Legion national commander. William “Bill” Clancy III was elected by delegates to the organization’s national convention in Tampa, Fla.
During his remarks to convention delegates, he set out his goals for an organization that this year surpassed 400,000 members to set an all-time membership record. And he stressed achieving them would be a team effort.
“All of my thoughts always bring me back to one word. It’s the word we,” Clancy said. “’We’ is infinitely more powerful than ‘I’. We is the word that our founding fathers chose when they wrote one of the best documents ever written, when they opened it with, ‘We, the people’.
“I think about we, the Sons of The American Legion … as a part of the American Legion Family. Four-hundred thousand strong and growing somewhat fast. We, the Sons of The American Legion, as a prominent social force for good, promoting every and all principles laid out in The American Legion Preamble.”
Clancy also spoke of the Sons’ role in promoting the Legion’s veteran suicide prevention mission. “We, the Sons of The American Legion, to carry forward the message of being the one,” he said. “Being the one to stop veteran suicide by conveying the training and to make the public aware of this tremendous horror facing our country – that veterans are taking their own lives.
“We’re going to continue to spread the message, but we’re going to do more than spread the message. We are going to endeavor to bring every veteran in the United States, all 15-plus million of them … into this American Legion Family, where they know they will be loved and cared for all the time.”
Clancy said he remembers as a child how exciting it was to celebrate the nation’s 200th birthday and pledged that the Sons would make the 250th birthday next July just as exciting.
“The American Legion, under Commander LaCoursiere, has launched (the USA 250 Challenge),” he said. “It’s a challenge not just to Legion Family members, but to all Americans to get involved in one of three things: physical fitness, service and/or mental health. We’re going to challenge everybody to create some activity centering around the idea of 250.”
Clancy said he and his family have signed up for the challenge and plan to complete multiple components. “The first component for us and for me, we’re going to do 250 workouts as I travel around the country,” he said. “The second component … is community service. I aim to plant 250 trees this year around our country and have them named after veterans in the local communities where we plant them.”
Clancy is a founding member of SAL Squadron 156 in City Island, where he has served multiple terms as squadron commander. He also has served as New York detachment commander and in national leadership positions, and also is a graduate of New York Boys State.
He is eligible for Sons membership through the military service of both his grandfather and father. “I grew up in an American Legion Family where there was never any talk of red or blue. It was only red, white and blue,” Clancy said. “I grew up in an American Legion Family where there were a lot of strong personalities. But if ever there was a task at hand, the devotion to mutual helpfulness prevailed. And I grew up in an American Legion Family where ‘for the good’ was not just a part of a meeting, but it was a weekly discussion at our post and at our family dinner table.
“Growing up with all the values laid out in the preamble of The American Legion and the Sons of The American Legion was a phenomenal way to grow. And my hope is that in the year ahead, I project those values to all Americans.”
- Sons