Preserving a home for vets in East Meadow

American Legion post needs renovations, members say

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A tall white house has stood on Bellmore Road in East Meadow since it was built in 1891. In its basement, logs act as support beams, holding up a rustic wooden ceiling. A door that leads to the backyard no longer closes all the way, and the basement often floods when it rains. A leaky roof causes additional damage during severe storms.

“As you could see, this building is old,” said Daniel Carbonare, 70, first vice commissioner of American Legion Post 1082, as he gave the Herald a tour on July 27. “There’s a ghost down there,” he said of the basement before closing its door and heading into a large dance hall.

Post members have called the building their home since 1935, and later shared it with the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2736 and the Nassau County Police American Legion. Despite its condition, the building is the only remaining veterans hall in East Meadow. Post members are now raising funds to renovate it, and set up a GoFundMe page in May that has raised $715 of its $35,000 goal.

“We’re trying to, firstly, fix the roof,” Carbonare said. “The roof leaks, and plumbing is, to say the least, an adventure.” He added that a bar was recently built into a wall of the party room, and he found live wires hanging loose behind it.

There are 106 life members of the post, most of whom are older than 70, Carbonare said. According to the most recent census data, between 2012 and 2016, there were 1,854 veterans living in East Meadow.

“A lot of younger vets, they all tell me the same thing,” Carbonare said. “They don’t have the time to get involved.” He added that it might take a while after serving before a veteran seeks out the service of the American Legion. In his case, he waited 22 years to join after returning from Vietnam in 1968.

Bill McCrindle, 59, who was on active duty in the Navy in 1984, is the post’s treasurer, and has been involved for three years. “In a residential area, which is kind of an odd place for it to be, it doesn’t get a lot of traffic,” McCrindle said of the post. “You blink and go right by it.”

But, he said, when he joined, he found a community, and was eventually joined by his wife, Adriana, who also served in the Navy, and completed four years of active duty in 1997.

“We like to be able to work with the community and give back something,” McCrindle said, “just by having the hall there and being able to rent it out to people who need it.”

When Hurricane Sandy slammed into the South Shore nearly six years ago, the post became a warming center for community members who were without heat or electricity. Residents have also rented the post for christenings, charity events and other special occasions.

“We’re trying to improve the looks and get more members to get involved,” McCrindle said. “I guess it’s been dwindling down.” In the early 1990s, when Carbonare first joined the post, he said, there were roughly 40 members at each weekly meeting. Now there are three or four.

East Meadow Boy Scout Troop 362 has lent a hand in the post’s renovations. McCrindle is an assistant scoutmaster, and his son Robert, 18, became an Eagle Scout last year. In May 2017, Robert installed a new welcome sign and resurfaced the hall’s front deck.

Jason Foerster, another Eagle Scout, will follow suit this weekend, when he plans to construct a brick patio and install benches around the post’s flagpole. “They’ve really helped us out,” Carbonare said.

As he spoke, a couple of post members were packing coolers with beer and fishing supplies for an outing the following day in Freeport — one of the post’s recent events and fundraising efforts. Next is a golf outing at Eisenhower Park on Aug. 9, which has an entry fee of $150 per person and includes a barbecue at the post afterward.

“We’ve got a lot of veterans who get together at this hall,” Carbonare said. “They have parties here with their family; they come for football on Sundays. When it’s gone, we’ll have no place else to go.”