On March 15, 2020, the American Legion will celebrate its one hundred-and-first birthday. Fifty-one years ago in 1969, the Ellendale Legion and Auxiliary took the opportunity to celebrate not only the Legion’s birthday, but also the birthdays of two prominent Legionnaires.
On March 15, 1919, members of the American Expeditionary Force met in Paris, France. World War I had ended four months earlier and the soldiers wanted to create an organization to “preserve the memories and incidents of our associations in the Great War.”
The result was the American Legion. Over the next few months, returning soldiers founded over three thousand Legion posts across the country. In Ellendale, Albert Miller and Nic Jansen were among the veterans who helped found Fidelity Post 296 in the fall of 1919.
Fifty years later, the Ellendale Auxiliary hosted a birthday party for the Legion’s 50th anniversary in March. In a happy coincidence, that month included the birthdays of Albert Miller (March 3, 1891) and Nic Jansen (March 31, 1895). So the birthday party celebrated the Legion and two of its members.
