This article appeared in the Marietta Daily Journal on Friday, August 22, 1969.
ATLANTA (UPI) – Some 60,000 American Legionnaires are looking forward to Monday’s five-hour parade and Tuesday’s keynote speech by Defense Secretary Melvin Laird as highlights of the Legion’s 51st Annual Convention which gets underway today.
Legion officials had hoped that President Nixon would be in Atlanta sometime during the seven-day convention to personally accept the Legion’s Distinguished Medal but that now seems doubtful.
“We’ve heard that he’s probably going to be on the West Coast. No one has told us whether he will make it here,” a spokesman told newsmen gathered at convention headquarters in the plush Regency Hyatt House.
Monday’s parade, a traditional event at all Legion conventions, begins at 7:00 p.m. with units from all branches of the military services participating along with marching units from all 50 states and the Legion’s own drill teams.
Officials said it should take until well past midnight for the hundreds of units to weave down Peachtree Street and pass the reviewing stand.
After Laird’s speech on Tuesday, the conventioneers will hear Gen. John D. Ryan, Air Force Chief of Staff on Wednesday and Col. Frank Borman, command pilot of Apollo 8 and just back from a highly successful good will tour of the Soviet Union, on Thursday.
Also on Thursday, at a noontime get-together, the some 3,000 official delegates will elect a new National Commander to succeed William C. Doyle. J. Milton Patrick, 55, bank president and mayor of Skiatook, Okla., is the only announced candidate and most Legionnaire spokesmen believe he’ll remain unopposed.
In between parades, speeches and elections, the Legionnaires will huddle in business sessions and committee meetings. Of course, there is always the inevitable contests to pick the best marching units and the best drum and bugle corps.
On Monday, the Georgia Legion will present a granite and bronze monument to the State to be located at the State capitol. The monument salutes Georgia soldiers who gave their lives in World War I and II, the Korean conflict, and the Vietnamese conflict.
However, with all the planned gaiety, a cloud will undoubtedly hang over the convention. Thursday, a still at large assailant, robbed and beat to death Edward Berkland, as he slept in his hotel room. The victim was a 78-year-old Legionnaire from Hopkinsville, Ky.
It was a “brutal and tragic happening totally foreign to the warm welcome Legionnaires are receiving in Atlanta,” the saddened National Commander told newsmen.
