Legion staff attends AUSA Convention

Joseph Grassi, deputy director for The American Legion National Security/Foreign Relations Division, and NS/FR Assistant Director Freddy Gesner attended the Association of the United States Army Convention in Washington, D.C., this week. Grassi participated in forums on the topics of Army readiness, military families, Special Operations forces, Army energy and sustainability, and Army resiliency training. Army resiliency training is being implemented in a response to the recent increase in cases of depression and suicide among soldiers. Grassi also obtained insight into the Army’s plan of action to address health promotion and health-risk reduction during the conference.

Gesner participated in forums on family quality-of-life issues and the future of Army manpower. Topics covered included effects of deployments on families of servicemen, DoD’s focused areas of improvement on quality of life for members and their families, organizations available for support, effects of lifting the stop-loss on retention and recruiting, and the effort to rehabilitate the 16 percent of troops the who are currently non-deployable.