What does American Legion do?

The American Legion Post 279 will meet on Thursday, March 7, 2013 at the Senior Citizens Center in Woodbury. Dinner is served at 5:45 p.m. and the meeting starts at 6:30 p.m.

People ask, what do you guys do. The answer is that we are family oriented and provide professional services to our Veterans and their families, our community, and to our youth.

We send boys and girls to Boys State and Girls State with the help of local businesses and civic organizations. We sponsor the Oratorical Contest for young boys and girls. We are a sponsor of the "Children's Fishing Rodeo" provided by the Tennessee Wildlife Agency, and local Game Warden, Mark Vance. We support Good Ole Days and Red Apple Days.

We conduct an Annual Veterans Day Program inconjunction with Cannon County High School, and we conduct The Annual Veterans Day Parade to honor our Veterans of Cannon County. We also sponsor the "Wall of Honor" in our local Court House honoring the Veterans of Cannon County (a must see). We visit our (12) veterans in our local Nursing Home monthly for refreshments, prayer, pledge, and talking about their military experiences. Our Chaplain, Britt Knox, has their pictures on the wall in the Nursing Home.

Our membership, under the leadership of Commander Bobby Ferrell (Legionnaire Of the Year for 2012) has grown from the original 22 charter members to a total of 81. Our Auxiliary, under the leadership of President Carol Davis has grown to 30 members. Our Sons of the American Legion Squadron 279, under the leadership of Squadron Commander, Dr. William (Bill) Jennings, has 30 members. We also sponsor and conduct the Kansas City Bar-B-Que Society (KCBS) fully sanctioned Bar-B-Que Cookoff Contest for Professional and Backyard Cookers.

This super event will be held on September 27-28 at the Cannon County Fair Grounds. There will be lots of good down home entertainment and plenty of good bar-b-que, plus we will have numerous craft booths and sponsor booths for you to visit. Come on out and see the Champion Professional Cookers and the Champion Backyard Cookers (the prize winners) and all of those super cookers, competing for valuable prize money and KCBS Points.

We also have a Veterans Service Officer, Penny Daniels, who has an office in the old hospital, down the hall from the Election Commission Office. Penny is a fully trained professional doing a truly outstanding job for the veterans of Cannon County and their families.

If you want to be part of a great team doing a great job for Cannon County come on out. It will be a great honor to have you as a member of American Legion (Hilton Stone) Post 279. There are 190 American Legion posts with 30,000 legionnaires in the state of Tennessee.