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William F. Eggo Post 2597, V.F.W.

William F. Eggo Post 2597 is the Pinehurst post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, the national organization of veterans who have served in the armed forces overseas in war. It was founded as Billerica Post 2597, had its own hall in Pinehurst by 1949, and by the 1960s bore the name of William F. Eggo, the longtime postmaster of Pinehurst. It is one of two Veterans of Foreign Wars posts in town, with Solomon Post 8819 in North Billerica, and it has taken part in the town's Memorial Day and Veterans Day observances since the 1930s.

Billerica Post 2597 first appears in the town's records in the warrant for the annual meeting of 1933, which asked $75 "to be used by Post No. 2597, Veterans of Foreign Wars, for fuel, lights for quarters and Memorial Day decorations." The town voted $50, and $100 the next year. The warrant for 1935 asked $300 for heat, light, janitor service and Memorial Day wreaths, and that for 1936 asked $500 "for light, heat, janitor service, flags, wreaths and grave markers," the sum "also to include Memorial Day exercises and services," with a separate $10 to pay the post's bill "for music furnished at their Memorial Day exercises." From 1937 the town paid toward the rent and upkeep of the post's quarters, $250 and then $300 a year, "at $25.00 per month," and in 1950 it voted the $300 so that the Selectmen could lease quarters for the post under Chapter 563 of the Acts of 1949. The sum was $500 a year in the later 1950s and $200 a year from 1963, carried in the budget as "V.F.W. Quarters (Pinehurst)" and later "V.F.W. Pinehurst" into the 1990s.

By 1949 the post had its own hall in Pinehurst. From the town election of February 4, 1950 the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall in Pinehurst was one of the town's polling places, and the town posted its warrants there, and in 1953, with the schools crowded by the growth of the town, the School Committee planned to hold classes in "the V. F. W. hall in Pinehurst" from September 1954. The Polk directory of 1985 lists the post at 781 Boston Road, the address it shared with the Pinehurst Civic Association.

William F. Eggo was postmaster of the Pinehurst post office from 1931 to 1958, chairman of the Memorial Field Commission in the 1950s and a member of the School Committee from 1957 to 1960. The town reports first call the post by his name in 1966, when the budget lists "V.F.W. (Eggo Post)" and the John F. Kennedy School thanked "the William Eggo Post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars" for the flags of its auditorium stage; they do not say when or why the post took his name.

Post 2597 has been part of Memorial Day since its first appropriation for "Memorial Day decorations." Its commander and one other member sat on the Memorial Day Committee that Town Meeting was asked to appoint in 1939 and 1940, George Dickey and Charles E. Buckley in 1939, and in 1948 the town voted to reimburse the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Disabled American Veterans for the military funerals of men who had died overseas in World War II. In 1973 Post Commander Michael Amoroso of Eggo Post opened a ceremony at which the district commander, Ovie Gallet, presented new American and state flags to the Marshall Middle School and the George E. Lewis Memorial Building, and at the fall Town Meeting of 1988 the post's color guard paraded into the Howard Ralston Auditorium when the veterans' agent presented medals to four of the town's former prisoners of war. At the town's Veterans Day breakfast of November 14, 2016, which paid tribute to Vietnam veterans, the post's commander, Bill Meehan, was a guest speaker, and the Grand Marshal of the Memorial Day parade of 2017 was James Perry, chaplain of the post. The post also sponsors the Voice of Democracy speech contest: students of Shawsheen Valley Technical High School won its district contest at Post 2597 in 2008 and 2010, and in 2011 a Shawsheen student went on from the post to win the state and regional contests and a place in the national competition in Washington. Some town reports of the late 1980s give the post's number in error as 268, the number of the town's old Harold W. Estey Post of the American Legion.

Billerica also had a post of AMVETS, the national organization of veterans of the Second World War and later wars. In 1970 Town Meeting voted unanimously to raise $200 "for the purpose of assisting in rental of quarters for Amvets Post #82," under Chapter 40, Section 9 of the General Laws, the same help it gave the Veterans of Foreign Wars posts. The item stayed in the budget through 1974, and in 1975 a motion to dismiss it carried with the Finance Committee's concurrence; no later mention of the AMVETS post was found. The Disabled American Veterans, Post 47, appears beside the two Veterans of Foreign Wars posts in the reports of the 1980s and 1990s, and in 1993 the budget carried a single item of $600 for the "V.F.W.-DAV Posts."

William F. Eggo Post 2597, V.F.W.

William F. Eggo Post 2597, V.F.W.

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