Legionnaires faces uphill fight in bid to save riverside post

By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff, 11/5/2001

CAMBRIDGE - The late-afternoon banter in the American Legion's Marsh Post is of Boston sports, local politics, and anthrax precautions at the post office.

There's something else, too. In a thin haze of cigarette smoke, between swigs from $1.75 bottles of beer, a handful of veterans also talk about their shaky future at this weed-infested elbow of the Charles River known as Hell's Half Acre.

''They'll level this in a heartbeat,'' said Pete DeCarlo, 53, a Vietnam veteran. ''I believe it's only a matter of time.''

What DeCarlo fears, and what appears inevitable under an ambitious river restoration project, is that the 200-member Marsh Post is headed for the scrap heap.

Under its yet-to-be-published master plan, the Metropolitan District Commission would eliminate the Depression-era bathhouse that 50 years ago was converted into a social club for World War II veterans from the nearby Marsh neighborhood.

''The building is in a bad state of repair. The use does not conform to what is considered appropriate along the river,'' said Renata von Tscharner, president of the Charles River Conservancy. ''This is public land, and it really is a private use on public land.''

According to the MDC, the post is an ''undistinguished brick structure'' located in a ''critical juncture'' on the last remaining marsh in the Charles River Basin. Under its plan, the wetlands would be fully restored, the post parking lot removed, and four-lane Greenough Boulevard narrowed to increase recreation space.

What's more, conservationists want the Marsh Post demolished to open a view to the graceful Eliot Bridge that spans the river from the Harvard University playing fields in Allston to the Buckingham, Browne & Nichols prep school in Cambridge.

The post's 50-year lease with the MDC expires in February. And although project manager Rick Corsi says the MDC is in no hurry to move the club, the veterans say they have not been told their future.

''If they come in February and say the lease is up, we're history,'' said bartender Bob DeMilia, whose relatives started the post in a storefront at Willard and Mount Auburn streets.

The veterans say they do not oppose the beautification plan, which Corsi estimates could take more than a dozen years to complete, but they wonder why their presence on the river is so noxious to environmentalists.

''We're out of the way, we're not in anybody's hair, and we're not bothering anybody,'' DeMilia said.

The post goes out of its way to be a good neighbor, DeMilia said. Prep school scullers who visit the adjacent Belmont Hill Boathouse routinely use the post's toilet facilities, for example, and its fund-raisers have long helped causes ranging from the New England Home for Little Wanderers to the Chelsea Soldiers' Home.

And inside a building where US House Speaker Thomas P. ''Tip'' O'Neill once held membership privileges, a photograph shows a young Ted Williams accepting a check for the Jimmy Fund from a past post commander.

Nostalgia aside, the veterans fervently believe that their military service and half-century tenancy should count for something in the planning.

''Who was over there in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War dodging the bullets? Was it the conservationists?'' asked Edward Babin, 67, the post's junior vice commander and a Korean War veteran.

State Representative Jarret Barrios, a Cambridge Democrat, calls the post a small but valuable blue-collar presence on a river that is dominated by private boatclubs.

''The American Legion has been there for a long time, but maybe not as long as Harvard,'' Barrios said. ''For them to lose that river access is a shame. We should very strongly consider retaining them.''

Corsi expressed surprise that the post's $1-a-year lease is due to expire soon. As a stopgap measure, he said the post and its members could remain at the site for about three years, and that the MDC would help relocate the club.

However, veterans at the post last week said that was not an option. The club, financially crippled by dwindling membership, cannot afford to pay market-rate rent in Cambridge, they said.

Vietnam veterans, many of whom preferred to start their own clubs, are not joining the post's graying, older ranks, Marsh Post members said. Neither are Gulf War veterans.

If evicted, the veterans added, their rent problem would be compounded by the daunting bureaucratic task of moving the liquor license to a new location in Cambridge.

State Representative Alice Wolf, a Democrat whose district includes the post, said if the post is threatened with imminent eviction, she would remind MDC Commissioner David Balfour of a verbal commitment he made two years ago to allow the post to remain at Hell's Half Acre for several years.

Von Tscharner, of the Charles River Conservancy, said the veterans deserve a home and a helping hand. ''It's important to find a place that would be better suited for what they want,'' she said.

But any sympathy for the veterans' plight is secondary to what von Tscharner and the MDC see as the greater public good of the Charles River's restoration. ''There should be only things on this public parkland that need to be on the water,'' she said.

That thinking dominates this particular battlefield, and the Marsh Post veterans seem resigned to defeat. But grudging resignation has not meant acceptance.

Babin, the post officer, offered this simple but straightforward summary of his club's philosophy: ''We deserve the right to stay here.''

This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 11/5/2001.
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