Mission … continued.
That’s the word from the newest commander of the West Virginia American Legion, who said Monday he won’t break ranks in his advocacy of the Mountain State’s military families — and families here, in general.
Matt Sampson, a career officer who most recently taught military science to students in WVU’s Army ROTC program, was named two weeks ago at the legion’s annual state convention in Huntington.
He’ll oversee an organization boasting 12,000 members in 102 local posts across the state.
His goals, as he said, remain the same as when he headed Morgantown Post 174 in recent years before his new slot in the chain of command.
That is, he wants to continue pushing for veterans to join the organization — while also stressing its civic outreach programs, such as Mountaineer Boys’ State, which introduces young people to the political process.
“This is about me,” he said. “It’s about the American Legion, which is really family helping family.”
Changing dynamics in the military have opened membership opportunities in the legion like never before, he said, including the organization’s auxiliary chapters open to the wives and husbands of those who served or are serving now.
Add to that the organization’s popular Sons of the American Legion branch, along with American Legion Riders, for those veterans and others with legion connections who are motorcycle enthusiasts.
There’s that, as he said, with the organization’s outreach to the children still at home whose moms and dads wear the uniform.
Lining up in formation with all of the above is also the legion’s famous Oratorical Contest, an event blending civic knowledge with public speaking that has trailed off of late, he said, while the country crawls out from the under the shadow of the pandemic.
Sampson, 54, came of age in small-town Iowa as America was emerging from Vietnam into the heights (or depths) of the Cold War — and then onto the War on Terror, which was “his” war.
His father and several uncles were all Vietnam-era veterans, and he felt the draw, too.
Plus, he said, he knew the military would help him extend his education after high school.
He earned his commission from West Point in 1991 — “It’s really overwhelming when you take it all in the first time,” regarding the fortress-like campus in New York’s Hudson River Valley — and served on active duty for 20 years as an officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
During his 15-month combat deployment in Iraq, he and his platoon mates sometimes built battle-zone infrastructure with bullets snapping the air overhead and incoming mortar whistling across the terrain for their American targets.
Such experiences, he said, informed his appreciation of the organizational structure of the military and its key people to be found in whatever moment — no matter the stripe on their shoulder.
That’s what he would tell the young men and women of WVU’s ROTC program who occupied his classroom.
Especially, he said, after Sept. 11, when it was clear where many of them were bound.
“I’d always say, ‘Listen to your sergeants’ — because they’re the ones who really know what’s going on.”
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