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05/03/2017 08:30 AMAlex Breen, Jr., can do something relatively few ex-military men can a decade after leaving the service: He can still fit into his uniform. Alex, in that uniform, will be a part of the upcoming Memorial Day Parade in Essex. He is currently president of the Essex Veterans Memorial Hall in Centerbrook, which organizes the parade. This year the parade will be on Monday, May 29, in downtown Essex starting at 9 a.m.
As he looks forward to this year’s Memorial Day Parade, Alex hopes for at least one difference: the weather. Last year it rained so hard the parade was officially called off. That notwithstanding, many of the participants decided to march anyway.
“Except for anyone carrying an instrument,” he says.
In the three years he has been head of the Essex Veterans Memorial Hall, Alex has brought changes to the organization.
“It shouldn’t be just a place to drink, even though it is one of the least expensive places,” he says.
Alex, who has two master’ degrees, one in organizational management and the other in human resources management, uses the current vocabulary of academia as he talks about the Memorial Hall.
“This is a paradigm shift,” he explains, “saying ‘Hey, this is not just a bar’; this is a place for the whole family.”
He downplays his own role in recasting the Memorial Hall image.
“There are good members, great people, and the resources to make this a better place. I just drive the bus,” he says.
Alex wants the Veterans Memorial Hall to be a club that serves both its members and the wider community.
“The mission of the club is to help veterans, their families, and the community. A lot of people don’t even know this place exists,” he says.
He has gotten the Veterans Hall involved with a food drive for the Shoreline Soup Kitchens & Pantries. The group also provides assistance to veterans in need. They also are the chartering organization for the local Boy Scout Troop 12 and offer a scholarship to a graduate of Valley Regional High School who has a family connection to the military.
Alex has started a number of new fundraising events and publicized them, so community members understand they are welcome at the fundraisers, among them several wild game dinners featuring locally caught fish and wildlife. Alex, an active local hunter and trapper, is one of the fish and game providers.
Alex has also started a bulletin board with pictures of members in uniform and has initiated a program to put name plates on the backs of chairs not only of current members but also of other family, whether living or not, who have served in the military.
“It’s meant to generate conversation and it’s also an educational way to look at the past,” he says. “And we don’t want these stories lost. So much of this history gets lost as I see it. We want family stories preserved.”
Alex has plugged the Veterans Hall into the marketing that is a regular feature of many organizations. Now members can get hats and T- and sweat shirts with the organization’s name.
The building that houses the group was once the schoolhouse in Centerbrook. In l946, at the end of World War II, the town gave the building to the veterans’ organization. The Essex Veterans Memorial Hall is independent, not associated with any other veterans’ programs, though both the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars use the building as a mailing address. Not all the members need be military, but for tax purposes, at least 75 percent must be veterans or currently serving in the armed forces; 25 percent may be lineal descendants of those who have served.
There are both male and female members, though Alex says he does not like to look at membership as a gender divide.
“We’re not looking at gender or race. I don’t see things that way,” he says. “I’m looking at a soldier, a sailor, or a marine,” he says.
Alex would like to see more soldiers, sailors, and marines in the club. He says veterans of different eras have different reactions to joining the organization.
“The World War II veterans, the Korean War, they’ve always been in clubs,” he says, “but the younger generation is not so club-oriented.”
Alex himself first got interested through longtime Veterans Hall member Jerry LaMark of Deep River, but his interest in the military goes back much to his early years in Millville, New Jersey. He joined the Army right after he graduated from high school. Because he was still only 17, his father had to sign for him to enlist.
He spent 20 years and five months in the Army, rising in rank from private to first sergeant. He served in the 101st Airborne, spent two years in Germany with the 7th Corps Artillery, and finished his career as an Army recruiter, responsible for the southern half of Connecticut.
He says that his most successful recruiting tool was telling potential enlistees what a difference military service had made in his own life.
“I never lied to them. I told them what the Army had to offer and what it did for me,” he says.
Alex did his undergraduate degree while in the service with online courses, the same way he did his masters’ degrees.
Military service, he says, taught him both patience and adaptability, but he says the biggest lesson was one about the United States.
“Military service makes you realize what we have and not to take it for granted,” he says.
After 10 years away from the military, Alex says he still misses the friendships formed in the service. The Army helped him with the move into civilian life, providing transition assistance including vital information like résumé writing. Alex now works as a territory sales manager for Altria, the corporation that owns Philip Morris and is one of the world’s largest producers and marketers of tobacco products.
In addition to his leadership of the Veterans Memorial Hall, Alex is also currently president of the Deep River-Chester Lions Club, an organization known for its efforts in sight, hearing, and diabetes awareness programs.
Despite his other responsibilities, Alex is a constant presence at Essex Veteran Memorial Hall.
“I’m here every day for something,” he says.