Getting ready to celebrate the Fourth of July, Carnation’s festival planners thought it only fitting to ask the American Legion Post 199 and Women’s Auxiliary to be collective grand marshals.

The groups were an appropriate match for the 2010 theme, “Here’s to the Red, White and Blue,” but they are also true assets to the community, Parade Chairwoman Kim Lisk said. The marshalship was a great way to honor them, she added.

The American Legion was chartered by Congress in 1919 as a patriotic, mutual-help, war-time veterans organization. A community-service organization which now numbers nearly 3 million members — men and women–in nearly 15,000 American Posts worldwide. These posts are organized into 55 departments — one each for the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, France, Mexico and the Philippines.

Not only serving our nation at large, members of the American Legion have helped the Carnation community by supporting groups like the Sno-Valley Senior Center, assist-

ing veterans around the Valley and donating $1,000 of fireworks to the Carnation Fourth of July celebration.

“We’ve been helpful for many years,” said Bob Nelson, an American Legion member and World War II veteran. “There’s not too many of us left. It’s mostly World War II veterans.”

“This is an honor and more people should be made award of what we veterans do,” Nelson added.

Membership eligibility in The American Legion is based on honorable federal active duty service with the U.S. Armed Forces in World War I, World War II, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Lebanon and Grenada operations in the 1980s, Operation Just Cause in 1989 and 1990 in Panama, and the Iraq conflicts.

Because eligibility dates remain open, all members of the U.S. Armed Forces are eligible to join The American Legion at this time, until the date of end of hostilities as determined by the government of the United States.

For more information on the American Legion Post 199 & Women’s Auxiliary, visit wadistrict11.com/post199/Index.htm.