In the basement of the Immaculate Conception Church, a monolithic yellow brick building just off a bustling Avenue in Astoria, stands a retired Marine who once stood on the deck of a ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and silently watched a plane on a suicide mission grow closer.
“Don’t let it hit the ship. Please don’t let it hit the ship,” Bill LaCavara, 84, remembered praying during that World War II moment over 60 years ago – the kamikaze ultimately flew over the ship and crashed into the ocean.
Believing God saved him from that fateful moment, LaCavara joined the local post of the Catholic War Veterans (CWV), a religion-based veteran’s organization facing declining memberships due to deaths and the Internet, said David Crum, president of CWV Post 1 in Astoria.
Since it started in 1935 in Astoria, CWV has grown to nearly 2,000 posts nationwide with about 16,000 members. But today, LaCavara is just one of 69 members of the CWV Post 1, where the youngest member is in his 30s – and many more of them 65 and older.
“We’re trying to turn it over to younger people to make it theirs,” said Crum, 61, who has struggled to sign up new, younger members since becoming president of the post in 2004.
Crum has tried advertising in local newspapers and religious publications, announcing in community bulletins, and even by word-of-mouth – but said he was afraid that Internet chat rooms and communities are replacing the social networking created by veteran organizations in the 1950s.
Today, “a lot of it has to do with computers and everything else online,” he said, though admitted he had yet to use a social network web site like Facebook to reach out to young veterans who, according to membership rules, must also be practicing Catholics.
For Army veteran David Valentin – who at 49 years old and a Catholic is the kind of young member CWV seeks – enrolling with American Legion was neither about religion nor the Internet.
It’s about “the nostalgia, the history, and the role [American Legion] played to fight for veteran rights,” he said, referring to G.I. Bill of 1944 that granted veterans educational and financial benefits.
“I’ve never thought of Catholic War Veterans as something I had to be a part of because I’m Catholic,” said Valentin, a father of two veterans in their 20s who are also members of American Legion.
According to a recent U.S. Census report, of the more than 23 million American veterans, Valentin’s sons are just two of 1.9 million veterans that make up what may well be the most desirable age group to any veteran organization: under 35.
The two young veterans joined their father at American Legion Post 118 in Queens – though one lives in Albany, N.Y., and the other in Maryland – to stay a part of the community they grew up in, said Valentin, and not because of his or the Internet’s influence.
“They volunteered on their own,” he said.
Of this younger veteran cohort, Crum, who is also a commander with the American Legion, said he finds “it hard to read them.”
Until Crum can figure out how to “read” young veterans and offer activities and services that attract them, CWV Post 1 must adapt to smaller budgets and older constituents. It has replaced costly dances with monthly meetings or food drives.
Still, the post does have several financial advantages over most other veteran organizations that will help keep the organization afloat through next year, when it celebrates its 75th anniversary, Crum said.
Operating out of the Immaculate Conception Church, CWV Post 1 is spared from paying rental fees and property taxes that seem to have doomed other organizations facing similar challenges; and it does not have to pay for insurance or electricity, he said.
The religious post has also begun interfaith programs to consolidate resources and reduce budget expenditures, which collects $7 from members each year.
Of the $25 annual membership dues, $15 goes to the national CWV organization; $3 to the state; and the remainder to Post 1. The dues, said Crum, are used to help veterans build resumes, network professionally, fill out health and other veteran benefits forms, and to integrate veterans back into civilian life.
LaCavara, who retired in 1991, is now president of Happy Seniors of Northern Queens, a social network program that is open to all seniors (but there is currently a waitlist).
“We want to grow as big as we can,” said Crum, so that the post can continue to “help as much as possible for these guys and their families.”
