‘The light is gone’: After 101 years, a South Jersey VFW goes up for sale

They listed the Budweiser dart board for sale in September. It was pocked with a thousand holes from years of spirited games played over countless veterans’ stories.

Alongside it went the stainless steel oven, a hefty safe, a pool table, an ice maker, tables, and bar equipment in an estate sale.

Then the leadership of Gross-Hollinshed VFW Post 1270 in Pennsauken shuttered the doors for good to put the building up for sale too.

Now the 2,300-square-foot one-story structure with roughly a half-acre of land at U.S. Route 130 and Cove Road is listed for $750,000 and awaits a buyer.

Mike Scully, commander of the 101-year-old post, vows that it and its members will remain together even without a building.

“We’re still a standalone post,” Scully said. “It’s unfortunate that the upkeep of the building and the overhead just wasn’t something that we could continue on with the decline in membership that we’ve been having over the past 10 to 12 years.”

He said that Post 1270 is in good standing with the national VFW headquarters.

“We are downsizing,” said Scully, who is scouting other locations where post members can gather without the overhead.

The building’s closure is part of a national trend in VFW membership declines as older members die, younger vets show less inclination to join, buildings age, and costs rise.

Members of the post’s auxiliary — those with fathers, mothers, or siblings who served overseas — wish the post were still open and that more efforts had been made to keep the building. The auxiliary members have scattered, seeking other VFWs to join.

“We’re just there to help out as much as we possibly can,” said JoAnn Reese, president of VFW 1270 Auxiliary. “Our hands are tied. We can only do so much.”

Nationally, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, an organization dedicated to supporting veterans and their families, boasted two million members in the 1970s, according to numbers supplied by the New Jersey VFW headquarters. Membership plummeted through the decades and by 2019 there were 1.16 million members.

Today that’s dropped to 931,056 — a 53% decrease over five decades. Much of the decline came as veterans from World War II died.

However, Ken Hagemann, adjutant for the New Jersey VFW headquarters, sees a bright spot. State membership grew by 717 members in 2024 and by 518 this year, he said.

“Most of the new members are veterans of the Global War on Terror,” Hagemann said.

Still, the long-term trend is down. The state VFW currently has 25,638 members, down from 35,402 in 2010. The median age of a member is 70.2.

Hagemann said that only veterans who have been deployed to a war zone can join, which considerably narrows recruiting. He also said modern campaigns are fought with fewer boots on the ground making multiple deployments, further reducing potential members.

“Although our declining numbers over the decades have affected the membership of the organization,” Hagemann said, “we continue to serve our veterans and troops in the communities where they live and work, recovered 11.4 billion in VA benefits for veterans last year, and advocate every day in Washington and Trenton.”

Hagemann also noted that less war is not a bad thing.

Scully has been commander of Post 1270 since 2021. He’s a retired master sergeant with the U.S. Air Force and served in multiple countries, including Afghanistan and Iraq as a master technician in aircraft maintenance.

Scully said the post’s leadership is looking to continue meetings at a library, another VFW post, or an American Legion Post.

Ten years ago, the post had about 129 members, he said. Today, it has 46.

But Scully said that was not the only factor in consideration of selling the building, which falls in a township zone that allows for residential or commercial uses.

“A lot of our posts are closing because of increased fees and upkeep in their buildings,” Scully said. “Our insurance, with a canteen in a building, is extraordinary, to just put it simple. In New Jersey, our insurance is now over $8,000 a year.”

He said the post has not been making money for a number of years.

“We’ve just been basically burning through whatever savings we have.”

He said older members have moved to warmer areas. And younger veterans are not as interested in joining. They are not as eager to swap stories about their years in the service, despite membership drives.

“They would come in and they would have a drink at the canteen, and share some stories, and then they would say, ‘Thank you, we’ll take the application,’” Scully said of potential members.

But they would never fill in the paperwork or return, he said.

Scully said membership also requires some volunteer work, such as driving older veterans to medical appointments, and attending parades and ceremonies. But many prospective members have young families, and say they don’t have the time, Scully said.

“Could leadership have done more?” Scully asked, answering: “Leadership can’t do anything right now unless it has $10,000 to $20,000 coming out of their pockets per year so we can continue to run this building.”

He said he appreciated the efforts by the auxiliary to raise money, but that it just wasn’t enough and would be difficult to sustain year after year.

Reese, the auxiliary president, said she’s disappointed by the sale. Now 79, she joined the auxiliary after her husband, a veteran, died eight years ago.

“Everything just went downhill,” Reese said of the post.

She said the auxiliary tried various fundraisers and launched a GoFundMe campaign. It ran a Facebook page. She said the members are upset.

“I understand they just didn’t have enough money to keep the place running,” Reese said. “They just sold everything. But we have no say over anything. Nobody is OK. I don’t think there’s one member that’s happy about it.”

Chuck Mars, the post canteen’s bartender and member of the auxiliary, believes leadership should have done more to keep the doors open. He’s now a member of the auxiliary for VFW Post 2445 in Maple Shade.

“We tried to raise money through flea markets, Italian nights, and comedy night,” Mars said, adding that the financial strain, including large utility bills, became too much.

“I’m hurt. It’s a shame that nobody could do anything,” Mars said. “The light is gone. It’s left a hole.”