Military Milestone – VFW post celebrates 80th anniversary

Today Magazine Online
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• Vietnam Veterans Comprise Majority of Avon VFW

By Bruce William Deckert

Editor-in-Chief • Today Magazine Online

The Vietnam War has been memorialized via numerous movies. A VFW post in Connecticut's Farmington Valley is celebrating a milestone this year, and Vietnam veterans comprise the lion's share of the post's membership.

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Gildo T. Consolini VFW Post 3272, based in Avon, is observing its 80th anniversary in 2025. A native son of Avon, Consolini was killed in 1943 while serving in the South Pacific during World War 2. The post was established by World War 1 veterans in November 1945, according to the post's website — World War 2 ended earlier that year.

"We no longer have any World War 2 members, but have all the subsequent wars represented," says Brian O'Donnell, a longtime member of Post 3272 who owns the Midas of Canton. "The majority of the post is made up of Vietnam veterans."

Until recently, WW2 veterans were the post's elder statesmen, but earlier this year the two remaining members from the celebrated Greatest Generation died: Morton Katz was 105 years old and John Kostrisak was 100 — both were Avon residents.

Kostrisak received the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest military award for valor in the U.S. Army, after the Medal of Honor. When Katz was 100, he was still working as a special public defender in Hartford Superior Court. The Connecticut Judicial Branch gave him the Lifetime of Public Service Award.

For the uninitiated, VFW is an initialism that stands for Veterans of Foreign Wars. VFW membership is for war veterans who served in an overseas conflict, while the American Legion is open to all veterans.

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The VFW is a nonprofit veterans service organization that "traces our roots back to 1899 when veterans of the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Philippine Insurrection (1899-1902) founded local organizations to secure rights and benefits for their service," according to the VFW Connecticut website. The VFW was chartered by Congress in 1936.

Before the VFW was organized, many Spanish-American and Philippine war veterans "arrived home wounded or sick," says the Post 3272 website.

"There was no medical care or veterans' pension for them, and they were left to care for themselves. In their misery, some of these veterans banded together and formed organizations that would eventually ... become known as the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States."

The VFW played an instrumental role in establishing the Veterans Administration in 1930, which became the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in 1989.

More recently, the VFW successfully advocated for the Post-9/11 GI Bill, enacted in 2008, that has provided better educational benefits for service members who began their military commitment after 9/11. The VFW also championed the Veterans Access, Choice And Accountability Act Of 2014.

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REFUGEE RESCUE

The Avon-based post's most significant achievement of recent years has been its Afghan refugee resettlement project.

Post members, with crucial help from the local community, brought a refugee family from Afghanistan to Connecticut. This family had assisted U.S. and coalition forces during the war in Afghanistan that began in 2001, less than a month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and lasted until August 2021.

The two-decade war is the longest conflict in American history. When the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, thousands of Afghan nationals who supported the U.S. were evacuated, but many more were unable to exit the country and faced a dangerous existence in the Taliban-controlled nation.

"Our goal was to fulfill in some measure the moral obligation our country has to those who helped us in that conflict ... at the risk of their own lives," says Tim Healy, who was the commander of the Avon-based VFW when the Afghan refugee project began in August 2023 — the project came to fruition in 2024 when the family arrived in Greater Hartford.

"The family is happily and safely here in Connecticut and working hard to become independent, productive citizens," Healy says.

A secondary goal of the Afghan refugee project, Healy notes, has been "to engage younger veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan — to help them bring their personal involvement in these struggles to a meaningful, satisfying conclusion.”

He adds that the project has offered these younger-generation veterans "a means to write a happy ending to their part in a story that otherwise had an unfortunate conclusion."

The current commander of Gildo Consolini Post 3272 is Jerry Stinson, an Avon resident. The senior vice commander is Peter Savino of Avon, and the junior vice commander is Chris Bulko of Canton.

CHAOTIC COMBAT

Classic movies about World War 2 and the Vietnam War are copious — including these critically acclaimed Vietnam War films: Apocalypse Now, Born on the Fourth of July, The Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket and Platoon.

Dr. Victor Hesselbrock, the longtime director at UConn’s Alcohol Research Center, is a Vietnam vet who says he hasn't watched any Vietnam War movies.

“There’s no way that Hollywood can capture the sights, sounds and smells of combat," says Hesselbrock, a Canton resident who has researched alcoholism for nearly five decades at the Farmington-based UConn School of Medicine. "Combat is as chaotic as can be imagined.”

Post 3272 meets weekly at Prince Thomas of Savoy, an Italian club located at 32 Old Farms Road in Avon, a stone's throw south of Avon's historic town center where the 200-year-old Avon Congregational Church soars skyward. The post held an 80th anniversary gala dinner in mid-November at the Farmington Woods clubhouse.

The Avon post has about 90 members — from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard — who reside in various municipalities in Greater Hartford.

The five-town Farmington Valley has one other post. Metacomet VFW Post 1926, based in Simsbury, was established in 1946. Overall, the VFW has about 1.4 million members at more than 5500 posts worldwide — about 80 posts are based in Connecticut. +

Sources — VFW Post 3272 website • VFW Connecticut website • VFW national website • VFW Fact Sheet • ChatGPT • other online outlets — look for an exclusive Q&A in an upcoming Today Magazine Online feature

Featuring community news that matters nationwide, Today Magazine Online aims to record Connecticut’s underreported upside — covering the heart of the Farmington Valley and beyond

Today editor-in-chief Bruce Deckert is a multi-award-winning journalist who believes all people merit awards when we leverage our various God-given gifts for good

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