Aug. 24, 1982: American Legion membership is available to those who served from this date through July 31, 1984, during what is known as the Lebanon/Grenada era. U.S. military personnel were deployed to Lebanon on a peacekeeping mission following a U.S.-brokered cease fire between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. France, Italy and the United Kingdom join American forces in the multinational effort. The low point of the mission comes Oct. 23, 1983, when 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French paratroopers are killed in a terrorist truck bombing in Beirut. This window of wartime service also includes the U.S. invasion of Grenada, Operation Urgent Fury, to topple the People’s Revolutionary Government and remove Cuban military forces from the Caribbean island nation. The four-day invasion takes 19 U.S. lives, wounds 337 and crashes nine American helicopters.
Aug. 24, 1994: The American Legion forms a coalition of organizations to help fight for a constitutional amendment to protect the flag from desecration. The Citizens Flag Alliance quickly grows to more than 140 groups.
Aug. 24, 2017: Army veteran Denise Rohan of Wisconsin is elected national commander at the 99th American Legion National Convention, in Reno, Nev., the first woman to hold the highest office in the largest organization of wartime veterans.
Aug. 24-30, 2018: The American Legion’s 100th National Convention is conducted in the city of its first national convention, Minneapolis. For the national convention parade, just as in 1919, the weather did not cooperate; threat of thunderstorms moved the parade inside the convention center. Featured in the convention’s opening ceremony is a musical journey back to the organization’s roots, with a Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., re-enactor. Joining the entertainers onstage of American Legion 100th Anniversary Honorary Committee Chairman Theodore Roosevelt IV.
