Geritol Construction Co. Builds the New American Legion Post 30 1996-1997

In 1992 Legion and Auxiliary members Merle and Margie Harper offered the John H. Slaughter American Legion Post 30 an option on a large parcel of land at 825 East Main St, Springerville, at a cost of $25.00. The Harpers proposed an even exchange of the small Post property on South Mountain Avenue which was adjacent to their own home, for this larger property, provided the present Post building was demolished and the land cleared. The option contract offered the Post two years after exercising the option in which to build a new building and move equipment from the old building to the new. Post 30 exercised the option and began amassing a building fund. In March of 1996 they broke ground. Herb Erhart drew up the plans, ordered the metal building and supervised much of the construction. It was decided to build a large (8000 square foot) metal building, to hire the pouring of the slab foundation, and for volunteer Legion members to construct the building from that point. The 25 regular members of the construction crew constituted themselves as the Geritol Construction Company. Within a year, the shell of the building was completed, and the Post held an Open House on April 12, 1997. The interior was completed over the next few months. This Post building has a large (4000 sq ft) main hall, a meeting room for Legion and Auxiliary, a large kitchen with pantry, an office, an armory, a small set of restrooms for general use, and large restrooms with showers as part of the disaster preparedness planning that the Auxiliary proposed. The Post building serves not only Post functions--weekly bingo, the Anniversary Ball, Boys State and Girls State dinners, meetings and periodic Legion events, and as a base for the Color Guard which serves at veteran funerals all over the White Mountains. The Post houses the equipment used by the Color Guard in the Independence Day and Veteran's Day parades and gravesite services (large covered trailer for parades and the smaller trailer for equipment for gravesite services). The Post building also serves the larger Springerville-Eagar community, in that it is used by other civic organizations--for the Firemen's Ball, the local hospital's Christmas Party, and many others--as well as for private celebrations, including weddings and anniversary celebrations, not to mention disaster response. The pictures are of the construction process, which the entire population followed with great interest. Jokes about the "old farts" constructing the building were constant, many from the old farts themselves, who joked about how happy their wives were to get them out of the house and how happy their doctors were at the exercise and lost pounds. Their camaraderie throughout was remarkable, and their pride in their achievement palpable. Six months after the Open House for the new building, two members of the Geritol Construction Company had died. Money ran out before the Geritol Construction Company was able to complete the inside of the new Post, and none of the local banks would lend to an organization whose principal source of income was Bingo. So one of the members lent the Post $27,000, a loan that was repaid by 2006. After the completion of the inside, other additions were made: a walk-in cooler for the bar, a bar in the large hall, and outbuildings. In 2011, the adjacent empty lot, which the Post had used for overflow parking, was put on the market. The Post took out a bank loan this time, with a mortgage on the Post for $65,000 on which the Post still owed $20,000 at the end of 2013, but anticipates having the entire amount paid off by 2015.