Excerpt from The American Legion Weekly, Vol. 8: May 7, 1926

HE Legion tradition of service to community was strengthened in Oil City, Pennsylvania, last March when forty members of James M. Henderson Post stood guard during the breaking of an ice gorge in the Allegheny River that brought the community to the brink of disaster and made it necessary that a force auxiliary to the regular police department guard life and property. Press dis patches during February told the country of the menace of the massed ice and of the efforts to mitigate the danger of the gorge through use of thermit, a heating agency of great power. These efforts reduced the size of the gorge, but the Oil City Legionnaires who had been sworn in as special police officers in February were needed when a month later the ice broke up. Let W. N. Curran, First vice-commander of Henderson Post, tell the rest of the story: On Sunday, March twenty-first, the water rose rapidly and the city police, firemen and Legionnaires went into action at once. The Legion Clubrooms were opened and turned over to the Red Cross for relief headquarters, rescue work_in the flood districts immediately began and a traffic squad organized to pre vent congestion in the danger zones. At midnight the power house was flooded, leaving the city in darkness, one bridge wrecked, with rising waters covering the floor of and menacing a second structure: Legion members guarded bridges, patrolled the darkened streets, and continued rescue work with no thought of stopping for sleep or rest. For three days and nights the city was at the mercy of the flood waters, the business district appearing more like Venice than a modern American city, during which time many citizens acquired a new respect for the boys whose only badge was the blue and gold American Legion cap.

Proof, if it were needed, that Legion membership means acceptance of civic responsibility above and beyond the ordinary.

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