Department history embodied
Frazier Brinley, Connecticut Centennial chairman, works at Department of Connecticut headquarters in Rocky Hill. His long lineage of Legion involvement makes him a fitting historian of the organization and the department.

Department history embodied

Frazier Brinley would do anything for the Department of Connecticut and The American Legion. The 69-year-old Navy veteran and 41-year Legionnaire has been a department commander, vice commander and historian, as well as a post commander and adjutant (a position he currently holds), and more – most notably national historian in 2004-2005. It would seem that fate tied Brinley to the Legion even before he joined – his birthday, June 10, is also the birthday of the department, and he is related to Eben Putnam, the Legion’s very first national historian.

Most of Brinley’s current involvement at the department level consists of various programs – several of which he started, from the Hall of Fame to a yearly walkathon for a children’s hospital – and, most of all, of retrieving and maintaining the history of both the department and its posts. He regularly gives old covers of Connecticut Legion News to commanders, and his office at the department’s headquarters – on the grounds of the Connecticut State Veterans Home and Hospital in Rocky Hill – is stuffed full of old documents, trophies, plaques, pictures and more. He’s trying to both keep the department’s history together and make it accessible to future generations; collating all the names, dates and places takes time, but Brinley “really thought it needed to be done,” he says. He’s moved from writing to transferring information to a computer, and plans to move on to scanning soon.

This dedication made Brinley a perfect candidate for a leadership role when Connecticut began to consider in 2013 how to plan for The American Legion’s 100th anniversary, to be celebrated in 2018-2019. Past Department Commander and National Executive Committee member (and current Americanism Commission Chairman) Richard Anderson “asked me to be the history part” of the committee for the 100th anniversary, Brinley says – or so he thought. He was actually volunteering to be chairman of the committee; Anderson is vice chairman.

But, as with the rest of his Legion activities, Brinley jumped right in. He is planning for subcommittees on everything from a history book to a parade (which the department hasn’t put on in about 40 years) to a Centennial Website Assistance Coordinator, department outings and more. He intends to make great use of district representatives and past department commanders: “They’re going to be the key to this whole thing,” he comments. “They know more about the department.” Brinley is still gathering committee members and has not conducted a full meeting yet, but it is coming.

To help Connecticut posts and members get started, Brinley has been utilizing resources made available by National Headquarters from the first Centennial message he sent to posts, in June 2013. By that September, he had started placing post profiles, charter post history and more in the department’s monthly bulletin, and soliciting others from posts. In the March 2014 edition, he adapted and customized content from the Legacy & Vision booklet and Centennial Celebration Workbook, available at www.legion.org/centennial, as a walk-through on how to start a post history page. Brinley has personally helped at least three posts start pages of their own and now has information from at least one a week coming in – as well as maintaining the page for his own, Post 103 of Westbrook. Some researchers have actually visited the Rocky Hill headquarters to work under his guidance.

Among the facets of Connecticut Legion history closest to Brinley’s heart are the Soldiers, Sailors and Marines Fund, established by the state in 1919 and administered by the Legion; the Veteran of the Month program started by Tyler-Seward-Kubish Post 44 of Bantam in 1989, which honors a deceased veteran every month and which gained national Americanism attention; and the American Legion State Forest in Barkhamsted, the core of which is about 500 acres bought and donated by the Legion in 1927. The relative lack of prominence especially of the forest is an example of what Brinley calls “history taken for granted.”

The formal approval of Connecticut’s Centennial committee was given by the Department Executive Committee in November 2014, but Brinley is already looking down the road to the celebration itself. Planning for the Legion’s 100th anniversary is just one more facet of his commitment to keeping a sense of history about the Department of Connecticut: “I wouldn’t do this,” he says, “if I didn’t want to do it.”