Dear Editor,

My name is Roger Brooke, Post Commander of VFW Post 5872 in Fairfield, and this letter is a response to a Letter to the Editor that you ran in the Freestone County Times on December 7, 2016. That letter claimed to have been written by Aubrey Childs, a current member of this Post and one of its founders. I seriously doubt that the letter came from Aubrey as it is full of false information, half truths, and several ridiculous assertions. And none of that is consistent with something that would have come from Aubrey Childs. At any rate, I have taken four excerpts from that letter and explained my disagreement with each and why I am convinced that particular passage would not have come from Aubrey. My selections from the letter are as follows:
Excerpt # 1 (Paragraph 2 of the Letter) “As most of you know, the VFW has been disbanded…”
Response: That statement is false. The Post has not been disbanded, but remains an active and viable organization. It meets at 6:30 PM on the first Tuesday of each month at the “Green Barn” in Fairfield. (The most recent meeting was on Tuesday December 6, 2016!) It has continued to meet since the Post members met early in this year and after thorough discussion of the pros and cons of selling the VFW Building, they voted to sell it. But the organization consists of its membership and does not disappear or disband because of the sale of the building. As a former official and founder of the organization, Aubrey would know this very well, so in all probability, someone other than Comrade Childs stated that the Post was disbanded.
Excerpt #2 (Paragraph 3 of the Letter) “…it is required that a letter go out to each and every member notifying them of the sale so many days before the sale is final. This has NOT been done!”
Response: That statement is untrue. All procedures for sale of have been followed. This is the responsibility of the Post Quartermaster/Adjutant and he has kept constant contact with the State Quartermaster to ensure that all regulations are being followed. Note that the statement says members notified of the sale “so many days” before the sale. How many days are “so many?” What rule would be so vague in specifying the time limitation?  It is also peculiar, that the writer does not specify the source of this supposed rule he is quoting.
I won’t banter back and forth on the details of VFW by-laws in this response, but as always, any VFW Post member who was concerned about possible non-adherence to requirements could have made that concern known in a Post meeting during the last seven months we have been discussing and contemplating sale of the building. No one did that and this includes the writer of the subject letter to the editor. And again, I assume the writer to be someone other than Aubrey Childs as I believe he would have gotten exact and specific rules and would have cited their source, date, revision number, etc. and I believe he would have contacted me to verify what was or was not done so as to get the Post on the right track if he thought we were straying.
Excerpt #3 (Paragraph 8 of the Letter) This paragraph begins “Some of the activities we did were:” and goes on to list many community activities carried out during the 40 years of existence of the VFW Post. It then pivots to the following: “He (Roger Brooke) has done very little events for the community and has been planning to do away with our post from the beginning.”
Response: I salute Comrade Childs and all other VFW founders and pioneers for their foresight and hard work in forming the VFW and for the years of great benefit they and their successors provided to Freestone County veterans and the community at large. Also, I applaud the activities listed in the letter.
However, I am certain that had the letter been under the control of Aubrey Childs, he would have avoided the self aggrandizement represented by an exhaustive list of his accomplishments and knowing the challenges of being a Post Commander, he would not have attempted to belittle the work of any successor Post Commander. But I believe that the actual writer of the letter is a person who is attempting to disguise himself with the sterling reputation of Aubrey Childs, even as he makes the scurrilous statement that I was “planning to do away with the Post from the beginning” for which he offers zero proof or support
Excerpt #4 (Paragraph 9 of the Letter) “As Post Commander, he (Roger Brooke) has control of the money that should be distributed equally among all of the members, but I’m afraid he has plans to make himself a healthy profit.”
Response: At the start of my letter, I promised to highlight some ridiculous assertions in the letter supposedly written by Aubrey Childs. Well the above excerpt is certainly ridiculous to the extreme. It is the Quartermaster who has control of VFW funds and not the Post Commander and it would be illegal to dispose of money from the sale of a tax exempt property by distribution of the proceeds to the members. Also, no Post member or Post Commander could profit from sale of Post property.
Aubrey Childs would know all of that but the actual writer of this excerpt apparently did not know. Either that or the writer just wants to try to foment confusion among Post members and try to discredit the Post in the eyes of the community. Would the founder of the Post do that? NO! I am convinced that Aubrey Childs had little if anything to do with the content of that letter.
Summary: There are at least two other passages in that letter which beg for a response, but I’ll stop here. The Post is alive and viable. This year, I received on behalf of the Post, a ceremonial VFW dagger and certificate for exceeding Post membership goals set by the State VFW. We continue to meet and serve veterans. All VFW regulations for sale of the building have been followed arid we project a banner year for 2017. There are many clues in the letter of December 7, that the writer was merely posing as Aubrey Childs in order to try to tear down the Fairfield VFW Post and its Commander. That writer should be ashamed of himself.
In closing, although I am tempted, I will refrain from directly addressing this “poser” by borrowing from the words of Senator Lloyd Benson when he spoke to Dan Quayle…,” Sir, I know Aubrey Childs. I respect Aubrey Childs. And you Sir, are no Aubrey Childs!” (Oops, I borrowed anyway, didn’t I?)

Roger Brooke
Post Commander 5872