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   Now that the Short Notice D.E.C. is behind us it is time to reflect on how the whole matter was handled.  With more than a week’s notice of the scheduled meeting still no agenda was forth coming.  Not until the actual meeting did what had become highly speculated on became known.  In the end, I am not certain why the District and Area Commanders could not have been given advance notice of what they were to be addressing.  Certainly the serious nature of the issue and the health of our Commander deserved an element of privacy.  However, the limits of the privacy when one becomes an elected officer of the level of Commander Castro are a bit different.  Like many an highly elected officer their duty is to those who have elected them.  To that end I applaud the Commander’s decision to step down for the betterment of the Legion and so that he could deal with this personal life unencumbered.  From that point on what was to happen at the meeting needs to be looked at.  The obvious order of business was to nominate and elect a new Commander.  Three people were nominated and accepted the nomination.  But now comes the puzzling part.  Bob Heinisch, the ultimate winner pulls out a nicely prepared brochure!  For a D.E.C. that had been left to speculate on what they were to address here is a Legionnaire with brochure in hand!  How did that happen!  Sort of left the other candidates at a decided disadvantage!
   What about the vote itself?  The District and Area Commanders were told they could cast but one vote each; not like at Convention where delegate strength was used.  Of course, not knowing what they were to deal with and not knowing who the candidates would be they had no choice but to accept these terms.  I don’t know about the other District Commanders did but our Commander was able to get word to the other officers of the District who in turn polled as many Posts as they could on such short notice.  In the end, the Commanders had only one vote.
   Now it falls to Commander Heinisch to move us forward.  Certainly, we wish him well and all the best.  What type of leader of one of the largest Departments in the American Legion family will he be?  Given the last three Commanders he has a lot of opportunity to make a mark for himself.  Starting with Commander Wilson’s creating our current financial crisis with the ill-fated relocation of Department HQ followed by the disastrous failure of Commander Van Kuran’s promised transparency and great financial leadership abilities to Commander’s Leach’s flash in the pan start and rapid fizzling out it is hard to believe Commander Heinisch could do worse!  It has become apparent our Department lacks leadership.  Oh, there are good leaders out there it just seems they are not stepping up to the level they could or are not being given the opportunity; either by design or lack of interest on the part of those who should be looking after our Legion.  Year after year we are promised transparency and year after year we fail to get it.  In the meantime, the Department is slipping into greater and greater problems.  Not unlike the frog who while sitting in the ever-warming water doesn’t realize until it is too late that he is being boiled to death.  Commander Heinisch look around you, take a careful look at what is going on.  Keep your Blue Caps in the loop and not just those who you feel you ‘owe’ your commandership!  After all it is the Blue Caps to who you owe your allegiance and duty!

                                                                                      Editor

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This site created August 2015

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