Our post has published many newsletters in several formats. Past Editors and writers included Professor James Stallings and Professor and Playwright Mark Sumner.
- Jim Stallings, a UNC Professor, enjoyed creating a periodic newsletter. He was very proud of his Army service in Korea. Jim held the unique assignment as the Commanding Officer of an Army Supply and Transport craft in Inchon, Korea. We are compiling a library of his works and will load them here as a .pdf file. His personal story will also be placed under the Our Heroes group.
- Mark Sumner served in World War II, but before the war, he had volunteered for the Army but was rejected. His hearing was bad. However, later, after December 7th, his local draft board called him in for a physical. If you got that letter, you were surely gone off to war. Mark reminisced that he boldly went to the physical thinking he was in and out. Not so! To his surprise, they passed him and cleared him for service. Mark said that his story got even better in that they sent him to fight in Europe and he was assigned as a forward scout. They gave him a machine gun and he was off to behind enemy lines to locate the Germans. Maybe, if you can not hear well, you know to be extra stealthy. Mark was a professor at UNC Chapel Hill, produced and wrote plays, and created the concept of live outdoor theater. In Snow Camp, North Carolina, he was called upon to help with the proof of concept and creation of the Snow Camp Outdoor Theater. Watch the Snow Camp story and see what a returning GI did to create history in North Carolina and beyond. Mark travelled across America visiting colleges and universities to share the concept.
- Lee Heavlin continued Mark Sumner’s legacy by creating a newsletter to disseminate post news. Later, Lee Heavlin served as post commander for seven years and needed to communicate fast and frequently to post members. The solution was to build a website. He personally designed, created, wrote, edited, and published online stories. He also published the award-winning newsletter, The Chapel Hill Legionnaire which took top honors at Department competitions. Heavlin contributes to the website and has created almost all post news stories published under NEWS in the taskbar. There are a lot of stories of interest of veterans or that are reported on post activities, history, members, honors, visitors, and more. He tells us that he is working on compiling the stories for bound editions, by year created. Heavlin received national recognition for writing the human-interest story of a long-time post member and a second for website design. The American Legion National Commander presented both awards at the 2023 American Legion Convention, in Charlotte, NC.
- William “Bill” Munsee also created a monthly newsletter. He crafted a Post Commander’s newsletter, The Commander’s Note, during COVID to keep home-bound members active and informed. This worked very well during his years as Post 6 Commander. View archive. Commander Munsee’s extensive library of post information is retained for historical reference in that he served as Post Commander during the four years when the post decided to design and build our current Post Home at 3700 NC Highway 54, Chapel Hill, NC.
Some of our Post History is all online and “priceless.” So, although having it in a digital format is good, hard-bound books is a long-term goal. Many American Legion posts provide a set of their historical documents and books to their town library. That is our goal, too. Annual post histories are also provided to the Department.
- Our current newsletter is The Gold Standard and is published monthly.
From our archive editions – The Chapel Hill Legionnaire Additional editions will be linked soon.
