Mar 14, 2013 3 min read

Filer-Sadlek Post 954, The American Legion, Jefferson will celebrate the 94th birthday of the founding of the American Legion. The celebration will begin with a dinner, prepared and served by Unit 954, American Legion auxiliary, at 6 p.m. Saturday.

The speaker for the evening will be James H. Hales Jr.

Hales enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1964 and was assigned as a ceremonial honor guard at Marine Barracks, Washington D.C., where his duties included guarding the president at Camp David, Md., and visiting foreign diplomats at the Blair House in Washington.

He is a combat veteran of Vietnam. He served as an infantryman with the First Marine Division and as a military policeman with the 3rd M.P. Battalion. His duties included capture, recovery, protection and incarceration of enemy prisoners of war. He was meritoriously promoted to the ranks of corporal and sergeant in a combat zone.

Hales was commissioned a second lieutenant after graduating from the University of North Carolina and completed officer candidate school at Quantico, Va., in 1974. During his career, he served in assignments throughout the United States, the Far East and Mediterranean area. He retired from the Marine Corps in 1985 as a captain.

Hales is a member of the Marine Corps League, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Disabled American Veterans, the AMVETS and the Military Officers of American Association.

However, his most notable accomplishments as a veteran advocate have been with the American Legion, where he served in various positions at the post, county, district, state and national levels. In 2005, he was elected to serve as the state commander of the 200,000 American Legionnaires in the Department of Pennsylvania and in 2011 was elected the national vice commander of the 2.4 million members of the American Legion.

Hales and his wife, Esther, a Uniontown native, have three sons, one daughter and 14 grandchildren.In addition, the post will honor and recognize students in the Jefferson-Morgan School District who are recipients of American Legion awards.

Receiving awards for the 2013 Color-It-Proud contest were: pre-kindergarden, Chelsea McGinnia; kindergarten, Franklin Staggers; first grade, Seth Wolfe; second grade, Cole Jones; third grade, Braxton Jones; fourth grade, Payne Saunders.

Winners of the fifth grade essay contest “What the American Flag Means to Me” were Caitlyn Dugan, first place, and Shelby Burkett, second place.

Winners of the grades six through eight essay contest “How Can We Support Our Local Veterans and their Families?” were Cameron Cernuska, sixth grade, first place; and Joelle Pahanish, second place.

The post will also recognize 60-year member Charles Barno.

The post awards the Robert E. Titus Award to those students who placed first in their tenth and eleventh grade classes the previous school year. Receiving the 2012 awards were: Duncan Alcorn, tenth grade, and Ashley Faddis, eleventh grade.