Veterans of Foreign Wars, Post 3521

Veterans of Foreign Wars, Post 3521 of Vienna was founded on November 15, 1987. Meeting in the fellowship room of the Vienna Methodist Church, the charter members elected the following officers:

Commander: Dave Whirrett
Senior Vice Commander: John R. Jones
Junior Vice Commander: John Goodworth
Quartermaster: Roger Viets
Adjutant: William Mizicko
Advocate: Art Cornfield
Chaplain: Cleon Smith
Officer of the Day: Bud Eyster
Surgeon: John Kondzich
Guard: Robert Timko
Service Officer: Harry Loveland
Trustees: Bud Eyster (three-year term), Joseph Wise (two-year term), Frederick Otte (one-year term)

The veterans moved their headquarters from the Methodist Church on April 19, 1988, to the site of the United States Air Base, where they have met with permission of the Air Force, on the first Wednesday of every month.

Post membership has risen from 26 charter members to 91 life members in 1999.

Post members play a large role in Vienna's annual Memorial Day observance. They provide and insert flowers and flags on veterans' graves, and place flags on poles lining Warren-Sharon Road in Vienna Center. (Norbert Carroll cut and welded the steel pipes that hold the flags securely to the poles. The Post funds the large flag that flies day and night at the Vienna Center flagpole and the electricity to light it.) Its members present veterans' memorial services at Crown Hill Burial Park and Vienna Township cemeteries, and take part in the ceremonies conducted at Memorial Auditorium at Mathews High School.

The Post raises funds for Memorial Day and Veterans Day observances through the sale of memorial poppies and by other projects such as garage sales. Monies raised also fund two scholarship grants for graduating Mathews High School seniors. Other funds are applied to savings bonds for annual Voice of Democracy and junior high essay contests, contributions to the Mathews High School yearbook and to the Vienna Ecumenical Food Pantry, sponsorship of a girls' softball team, and Spinoza bears for the chronically ill children at Tod Children's Hospital.

Donations to purchase Christmas gifts and daily necessities are also made to veterans' hospitals in Brook Park and Brecksville, Ohio, and to the national home for veterans' children in East Rapids, Michigan. Flowers and fruit baskets are sent to Post 3521 members and their spouses who become ill or are hospitalized.

At a family's request, Post members provide an honor guard for the deceased veteran's funeral.

The names of various members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3521 have, and continue to be, familiar to Vienna residents, for many of them serve the community in other capacities.