What year was the American Legion founded?

A Legion post stands in nearly every American town - that brick building with the flagpole out front and veterans' license plates in the parking lot. It's where tradition meets purpose, where service continues after uniform. But the story of America's largest veterans' organization begins in an unlikely place: a Paris club room in the aftermath of the Great War. What year did veterans come together to form the Legion?

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The answer is: 1919

It began in March 1919 with Theodore Roosevelt Jr. gathering fellow officers at the American Club in Paris. Over cups of bitter French coffee that could probably fuel a tank, they tackled a pressing question: what happens to the bonds between soldiers when the fighting stops?

They saw what awaited veterans back home: limited medical care, minimal disability support, and a government bureaucracy unprepared for millions of soldiers transitioning to civilian life. They needed more than just another veterans' social club - they needed an organization with teeth.

The movement gained momentum that May in St. Louis, where delegates gathered for the crucial caucus that would give the organization its official name. There, they drafted the preamble to the Legion's constitution, setting down in words what the Paris meeting had sparked in spirit: proper care for wounded veterans, education benefits for all who served, and the radical idea that shell shock - what we now call PTSD - deserved real treatment, not dismissal.

The pieces fell rapidly into place: the National Executive Committee adopted the Legion's distinctive emblem in June, and Congress granted the official charter in September. By November, some 15,000 veterans converged on Minneapolis for the first National Convention - quite a upgrade from that small Paris gathering just months before.

The Legion would go on to craft the GI Bill, push for proper treatment of Agent Orange victims, and modernize veterans' healthcare. Their influence reached beyond veterans' affairs into American civic life, from writing the flag code (though they're surprisingly chill about those car dealership flags) to launching youth programs that would later count astronauts and presidents among their alumni.