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Veteran’s Club Is More Than Beano Games
Just up what locals call the
Blackwoods Road
toward Cherryfield, across from the town cemetery, stands the
Franklin Veteran’s Club.
Teddy Giles
cooks up meals for 200 Beano players every weekend at the
Veteran’s Club. Being the club’s manager isn’t enough: She also
finds time to shop for food on Friday, peel potatoes and do
other preparation on Saturday morning, then start at 4:30 a.m.
on Sunday to finish off the dinners and desserts in time for the
1 p.m. crowd. |
The 200 local men
and women who are members know the club for its range of service
projects and community involvement. And the 200 or so more who also
are regulars, who come from
Franklin
and beyond, know it for its longstanding Beano games every Sunday
afternoon.
In a town steeped
in history, the Franklin Veteran’s Club is a relatively recent civic
force.
It has modest
beginnings, with members gathering in the old town hall. Founded in
1978 and incorporated in 1980, the club was intended for all
military veterans in town, whether they served in a war or not.
“Twenty-five years
ago, when we started, there were a lot of people who didn’t belong
to either the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) or the American
Legion,” said Bruce Carter, one of the co-founders.
“We had a lot of
peacetime vets. We decided ‘Let’s do this, it’s a good thing,’ It
just kind of grew from there.”
To raise money in a
significant way, they ran Beano games out of the Sullivan-Sorrento
Recreation Center. That allowed them to build their own club
building in 1984.
Eleven years later,
in 1995, they took on a major expansion with the construction of an
adjoining 50-by-70-foot hall, specifically for Beano.
The money from
Beano provides most of the club’s income.
Among the more
visible activities of the club are the three $1,000 scholarships it
provides to
Franklin
students. More quietly, the club helps out with donations if there
is a local family in need.
The club also makes
donations to other local groups, such as the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts
and Cub Scouts. The club built the baseball field behind it, and
sponsors the Little League teams that play there.
Additionally, at
Christmas, members make fruit baskets for the elderly.
One of the club’s
current projects is serving as the collection point for monetary
donations toward the rebuilding of the just-burned Franklin Trading
Post.
That definitely
falls into the good-neighbor category, as the Trading Post was just
down Route 182 from the Veterans. |
