McMinnville VFW Searching For New Members For Reactivating Auxiliary

McMinnville’s Veterans of Foreign Wars post is working to reactivate its auxiliary.

Tennessee’s State Auxiliary Chief of Staff Phyllis Barnes said that the VFW wanted to try to start a new auxiliary. The auxiliary shut down earlier this summer due to a lack of participation.

Barnes said it’s necessary to have auxiliaries available because they provide veterans and their families with important resources and programs.

“Just doing the work for our veterans,” Barnes said. “And what better way to show how we feel about our veterans than being a member. That’s what we do. We get in there and fight for the rights that they were promised. ”

Barnes said the group is searching for ten new members. Barnes said that memberships are available for $25 a year and that people may join if they are or they have a loved one that fought in a foreign war.

“Fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, widowers, widows, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, grandfathers, grandmothers, grandsons, and granddaughters are persons that are eligible to be members of the VFW,” Barnes said. “And that’s a lot of people even on one person that’s a member of the VFW that can join the auxiliary. The more people we have to join, the more we can get done. We raise money to take care of veterans and their families.”

Barnes said they hope to inspire younger generations to join the VFW by making it a place of resources for veterans. She said she thinks that young veterans don’t want to join because historical VFWs were places for veterans to come together and drink.

“I think a lot of the problem they had before especially in McMinnville is that it’s the bible belt,” Barnes said. “It used to be in the VFW building they had a bar. But the VFW now does not have a bar and does not intend on having a bar. These new veterans that are coming back right now, they don’t want to drink. That’s been one of the problems with the McMinnville folks and around here is people didn’t want to join because of the bar. But there’s so many of us that don’t drink and we want to do it for the right reasons and fight for our veterans.”