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Billerica Post 116, American Legion

Billerica Post 116 of the American Legion, the national organization of veterans founded in 1919 by men who had served in the First World War, was the Legion post of North Billerica, where from 1934 to 1972 it owned the Thomas Talbot Memorial Hall. In the 1930s the town also had a second Legion post, the Harold W. Estey Post No. 268, and the Legion shared with the other veterans' organizations the charge of the town's Memorial Day exercises and Armistice Day programs.

The post was organized after World War I and was in existence by the annual town meeting of 1920, which appointed Thomas F. Sheridan, George P. Greenwood, Herbert A. King and Thomas F. Lyons to confer with it about a memorial to the town's service men. At the first of two joint meetings it was "unanimously agreed that a permanent building that would be of service, rather than a monument, should be the memorial." The Legion suggested a trophy room and Legion headquarters in a much needed extension of the town hall, and in the meantime "a club room at the North village, where a majority of the Legion members are." In 1921 the town accepted the committee's report and raised $200 "to provide suitable quarters for Post No. 116, American Legion, at North Billerica." From then on Town Meeting voted money toward the post's quarters every year, $150 a year from 1922 and $300 from 1929.

In 1931 the post asked for "the free use of the rooms in Union Hall, and heat and light the same," and the committee that inspected Union Hall in 1932 found its upper floor "used for social gatherings by the Garden City Improvement Association, Billerica Post 116, American Legion and the Women's Auxiliary to the latter organization." That year the town voted $300 for the post's quarters on condition that the post return any money left unspent to the Town Treasurer.

At the annual town meeting of 1934 Thomas T. Clark announced that the heirs of Thomas Talbot wished Thomas Talbot Hall to be deeded to Post 116, and the meeting gave the heirs a rising vote of thanks. The hall, built in 1891 in memory of Thomas Talbot, had been held by private trustees for the use of the inhabitants. On August 20, 1934 his heirs, Isabella W. T. Clark and Grace Talbot Randall, re-entered it and ended the trust, and by a deed dated August 28, 1934 they conveyed it to the Billerica Post, Number 116, Building Corporation of the American Legion of Massachusetts (Middlesex North Registry of Deeds, Book 849, Page 200). The warrant for 1935 asked $1,200 "for immediate repairs and maintenance of quarters for Billerica Post 116," and the town's accounts for 1935 show $1,199.87 of it spent. In 1946, on the recommendation of the Planning Board, Town Meeting rezoned the post's land on Mt. Pleasant Street between the Boston and Maine Railroad and Billerica Avenue in North Billerica, "the site upon which the American Legion Post is located," from a residence to a business district. The town kept up a small yearly sum for Legion quarters, $200 in the 1960s, through 1972, and the budget for 1973 carried nothing for it. In October 1972 the building corporation, with Albert A. Dickinson as president, sold the hall for $20,000 to Content Homes, Inc. (Book 2037, Page 35), and it was razed and replaced by a tennis center in 1974.

The post took the lead in the town's memorials of the Second World War. On an article introduced by Billerica Post 116 at the town meeting of February 1943, the town set up an Honor Roll committee, which under Edwin P. Simpson as chairman put up an honor roll of the town's men and women in the armed forces on the Town Common. It was dedicated at a program in the Town Hall on Sunday, December 19, 1943, when Commander Frank B. Kennedy of Post 116 led the pledge of allegiance, and the committee kept adding names until the end of the war. The same year the post proposed that the town set up a bureau for all veterans' matters, "Rehabilitation, Employment, Pension, Soldiers' Relief," under a Veterans' Aid and Pension Agent appointed by the Selectmen. In 1948 the town voted $1,000 to reimburse the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Disabled American Veterans for their expenses at the military funerals of men who had died overseas in World War II. Post 116 also submitted the articles in the warrant for the annual meeting of 1957 to name the square at Rogers and High Streets for Paul J. Horman "in memory of a veteran killed in the service of his country," and to raise $750 for flag poles in the Old North Cemetery on Pollard Street, the North Cemetery, the Fox Hill Cemetery and the South Cemetery.

The Legion posts shared the charge of Memorial Day with the older veterans. In 1939 and 1940 Town Meeting was asked to have the Moderator appoint a Memorial Day Committee "to have full charge of the Memorial Day exercises," made up of the commander and one other member of each of the Legion posts, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Spanish American War veterans, "eight in all." The committee of 1939 was Victor J. Hosmer and Thomas A. Ellis for the Spanish American War veterans, George Dickey and Charles E. Buckley for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, George M. Dixon and Frank T. Dignon for the Harold W. Estey Post, and Walter M. Young and Arthur T. Greathead for the Billerica Post.

The post also carried the observances into the schools. In 1927 "the local post of the American Legion" gave silver cups in the senior and junior high schools for the best essays on "Patriotism." In 1942 three members of Post 116 were guest speakers at the Armistice Day program at Howe High School, and through the 1940s the post's members were guests at the school's Armistice Day and Memorial Day programs; in 1944 the commander was the Armistice Day speaker. Frank B. Kennedy, a past commander, gave a yearly prize for the best essay or poem on "What Armistice Day means to me this year," and from 1947 into the 1950s the post presented its award to the school's entry in the American Legion oratorical contest at the Memorial Day exercises. From 1946 the school also sent juniors to the Boys' State and Girls' State gatherings sponsored by the American Legion.

The second post, the Harold W. Estey Post No. 268, was named for Harold W. Estey, a Billerica Centre dentist and militia officer who died in the service with the American Expeditionary Forces in 1918. The Lowell Suburban Directory of 1932 lists it among the town's organizations. In 1932 the School Committee granted "the portable at the Center" as a meeting place for the American Legion and the Boy Scouts, and the warrant for the annual meeting of 1935 asked $75 to reimburse the Estey Post for the electrical equipment, installation and service it had put into the Howe Portable School, "now being used exclusively by E.R.A. workers." The post gave medals at the Howe High School graduations of 1938 and 1939, for an oration on the Constitution and to the winner of the American Legion oratorical contest, and it named two members of the Memorial Day committee of 1939. No mention of the Estey Post after 1940 was found in the town reports.

After the sale of the hall the town reports name the American Legion only in passing, as one of the veterans' organizations that helped the veterans' agent present medals to four of the town's former prisoners of war at the fall Town Meeting of 1988. No record of the post's later quarters or of its closing was found.

Billerica Post 116, American Legion

Billerica Post 116, American Legion

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