Gil Evachevski’s father, Daniel, had fought through more than two miserable years in Italy with “D” Battery, the local National Guard outfit. He’d joined the guard back in the thirties, when it was a few extra bucks to put food on the table for his growing family, and stayed with it, even after he’d managed to get a job at Clark Plywood, never figuring a war would come along. When the battery was called up in the summer of 1940, he figured it would only be for a few months, but it was the summer of 1945 before he could come back home, take off the olive drab, and go to work at the plywood plant again. Though he was home but rarely during the period, and didn’t get home at all between early ’43 and late ’45, and though he missed his wife and family a lot, he didn’t begrudge the time gone. There was a job to be done, and he and his fellow GIs did it – did it damn good, in fact.
Most of the time that Dan had been growing up in Spearfish Lake, he’d been aware of the Post out on the edge of town, One day after he got back, Dan figured since he was a veteran now, he’d better drop by out there and see about joining. He was a little surprised to find he was not particularly welcome. The Post was mostly made up of World War I vets, of course, and they could see the handwriting on the wall – there were going to be a lot of young veterans coming home in the next year or two. It was clear the young vets were going to be more interested in veterans’ issues and their own war, rather than important stuff like drinking and trying to drop water bags on people at conventions.
The problem was not local to Spearfish Lake, of course; it was like that in many places across the country. Dan and a handful of other vets got their heads together, and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to have to deal with the old farts out at the Post. By the end of the year they formed a group of their own, and joined it with the American Veterans – Amvets – a veterans’ organization that sprang up in the wake of World War II in reaction to the problem on a nationwide basis
The Amvets never grew to the size of the more traditional veteran’s organizations, mostly because the World War I veterans had seen the future perfectly: in only a couple years, they were swamped by the numbers of returning World War II veterans, and they had to learn to like it. And, essentially, that’s what happened in Spearfish Lake, too, although it took a little longer there than elsewhere.
The Spearfish Lake Amvets had a few good years, but they never grew to the size of the competing Post. In Spearfish Lake, the Post kept much of the party tone given it by the World War One veterans. The Amvets were mostly “D” battery veterans, and others from the area. The way things worked out, in Spearfish Lake, anyway, the Amvets tended to be the people who had seen serious combat, while the Post tended to the more rear-echelon types, one of the things that added to the tension between the groups. That continued when the Korean veterans came in a few years later. They could work together on some things, and did, but there was always a little wall between the groups.
But the Amvets in Spearfish Lake – and, to a lesser extent, the Post – began to wither in the 1960s, partly because veterans’ issues weren’t the priority that they had been when the members were fresh out of service. The decline continued through the seventies as the older vets began to die off.
By the early 80s, the Spearfish Lake Amvets were down to half a dozen active members, and maybe twice that many who held memberships but rarely showed up. Dan Evachevski was one of those who had hung in there all those years. One day in the fall of 1981, he dropped by Spearfish Lake Appliance to have a talk with Gil, who with Harold Hekkinan and Bud Ellsberg were the only Vietnam veterans among the Amvets, and none of them were active. Dan came straight to the point: “Gil, we’ve got a problem out at the Amvets.”
“The dishwasher again?” Gil asked.
“No, nothing like that,” his father told him. “We’ve got a problem with the Post. They’re trying to wipe us out.”
Dan explained that in recent months there had been a number of Post members join the Amvets – not locally, but through the national, and got assigned locally. “It’s clear as mud to me what they’re up to,” he explained. “We only had eight guys show up for our last election of officers. I figure they plan to put their own slate of officers in place, their own board, then vote to close the chapter, sell the building, and take the money. Now, I think even the Amvets commander is in their pockets. I sure wish there were some way that gang of Vietnam veterans of yours could help out.”
It didn’t take much urging; Gil always was ready to take a slap at the Post whenever the chance arose, especially after the Toivo memorial and Glenn Mackey’s death. “I’ll work on it,” he said. “You’re still the membership chairman, aren’t you?”
That night, Gil called the Toivo expedition members together and explained what was going on. “You remember we were going to work the expedition funding through the AVVW,” he said. “Well, guys, the AVVW just isn’t going to fly in the long run. I think they’re down under ten chapters, now. If we’re going to start holding chili and bingo night fundraisers for the expedition like we talked about, we need a place to do it.”
“We can get the Baptist Church hall for them,” Mark reported. “But let’s face it, they’re not going to be big on bingo, and no beer, of course.”
“Yeah,” Gil said. “That will sort of put a lid on things. I figure we can help Dad out, and maybe we can get a real sweetheart rate on a place to hold them.”
“And, flip off the Post, of course,” Harold smiled.
“Well, yeah, there is that, too,” Gil grinned.
“We’re going to have to keep real quiet about this,” Ryan warned. “If the Post gets a whiff of this, they’ll pack the place.”
They all signed on right there, and in the next day or so the rest of the handful of members of the AVVW joined in with them, all sworn to secrecy. Harold and Gil carried most of the ball after that, only approaching people they figured could keep their mouths shut.
When Gil and Harold showed up for the election of officers on Sunday afternoon a few days later, it proved Dan’s suspicions were correct: there were only a handful of Amvets there, but a dozen or more Post members who had never been to a meeting before.
But ten minutes after the meeting got under way, just before the election occurred, the front door opened and a steady stream of younger men walked in and took seats.
The Amvets commander was clearly a stooge for the Post, for whatever reason, but the Post still tried to railroad it through: the nominating committee reported their choice for a post commander, and a voice called for the nominations to be closed.
“Just a damn minute,” Gil said in a voice only a sergeant major could manage. “You’re supposed to call for nominations from the floor.”
The post commander looked around and saw he’d better do just that. “Do you have a nomination?” he asked.
“Yes,” Gil said. “I nominate Harold Hekkinan.”
“Second the nomination,” Mark said.
“Are you a member?” the post commander said. “I don’t know you.”
“He’s a member,” Dan broke in. “I got the membership roll right here.”
It was all over but the voting. When the dust settled, Harold was the commander, Dan Evachevski vice commander, Mark was the secretary, Bud was the treasurer, and Gil and a couple of the older Amvets they felt could be trusted were on the board of directors. The Post guys had been beaten at their own game.
Once the election was over with, Hekkinan took the gavel. “OK, is there any other business to be brought before the meeting?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Dan said. “I move we ask the American Veterans of the Vietnam War Post 17 to join with us in the management of the building.”
“Second the motion,” Bud chimed in.
The vote was approved without discussion. Mark and Steve, who had been sitting at the back of the building, slipped outside while the meeting went on. They were back inside a few minutes later while a discussion was under way to close the bar.
“It’s like this,” Dan said. “The bar has been losing money for years. It’s been a drain on us. We could maybe open it one night a week, or just after meetings or on special occasions, but as a regular business, we’ve needed to get out of it for the longest time.”
“Let the Post have the bar business,” Gil agreed. “And let them have the liability for turning drunks out on the road, too.”
“Did we miss anything?” Mark whispered to Ryan.
“We voted to join with the AVVW honors unit,” he smiled as he whispered back. “Kind of funny, thinking like an Amvet.”
In the end, they voted to close the bar entirely, but leave the bar in place so renters of the hall could use it on a bring-your-own-bottle and liability-insurance basis – but to keep it open that afternoon. With that, the meeting came to an end, and the bar opened for the last time.
The Post people couldn’t wait to get out of the building, but as they left, they saw there had already been a change. There was a new sign in front of the building that read:
“I had Jackie run it up,” Mark said. “We’ll leave it like that for a few days, just to rub it into the Post, then balance it out a little better.”
“Hell, no,” Dan told him. “Leave it the way it is. You guys deserve the credit, and we need to pass things on.” Most of the remaining older Amvets agreed with him.
Things got back to a new normal in the days after that. The handful of older Amvets still got together on Tuesday nights just as they had for over thirty years, and there was a locked cabinet behind the bar where they kept their own liquor. There was a workbee the following weekend – the turnout was much smaller – to clean the place up and give it a paint job it had sorely needed. And, a couple of weeks later, after a story in the Record-Herald announcing the Toivo expedition, the AVVW held their first chili supper and bingo night, but it was a BYOB affair.
For the record, Hjalmer Lindahlsen was one of the new AVVW members who had joined the Amvets, but he was pointedly invited to keep the hell away from the chili.
In the years to come, the AVVW would continue with chili and bingo nights once a month, in the winter months. Slowly, most of the local AVVW members moved over to the Amvets as what little remaining of the national organization of the Vietnam group withered and died. The AVVW in Spearfish Lake mostly became a shell for the Toivo expedition, although a few of the guys who weren’t on the expedition stayed with the AVVW, mostly because they had known Henry, too.
In time, the national organization died, and the Henry Toivo Post 17 was the last remaining local organization. One day Gil, who was the nominal commander of the Spearfish Lake group, received a thick package in the mail, informing him that he was now the national commander, and Post 17 held the national charter.
“Well,” Gil said to himself as he stuffed the contents of the package into a file drawer at Spearfish Lake Appliance, “It did the job it needed to do.”