Slideshow Regulars Lift a Glass and Sing Farewell to Burlington’s VFW ‘Canteen’

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Regulars Lift a Glass and Sing Farewell to Burlington’s VFW ‘Canteen’

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It was still light out on Saturday when Chris and Sonny, veterans of wars a generation apart, sat down together at the honey-hued bar top and ordered their first round.

Behind them, a DJ hooked up equipment for karaoke — the bar's main draw on Saturday nights. Chris and Sonny, who wouldn't give their last names, claimed that karaoke wasn't their thing. But as soon as the speakers were plugged in and AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" started playing, both men sang the chorus from their stools.

Years ago, the pair met in this rectangular room inside this squat triangle of a building in downtown Burlington, home of the Howard Plant Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 782. Chris started coming to the VFW after two tours in Iraq; Sonny, since he survived the Vietnam War.

Saturday was their last night at the bar. The VFW is selling its property on South Winooski Avenue to Champlain Housing Trust, which plans to tear down the clubhouse later this year and build 38 income-restricted apartments, including five for homeless veterans. The project, supported with public funds, will cost nearly $20 million.

The deal marks a new chapter in the 102-year history of Vermont's oldest VFW post. The VFW will own a 2,500-square-foot suite on the ground floor of the new building when it opens in 2025. "The plan is to create a space where we're able to do all the things we do now — and more," said the post's commander, racial justice activist and U.S. Army veteran Mark Hughes.

Ahead of the demolition, the post's leaders decided not to renew the organization's liquor license, which expired on Saturday. The "canteen," as members refer to the bar — a well-known but, in Hughes' view, secondary function of the post — was facing a quiet, unmarked decommissioning until some regulars caught wind of the news and organized a last-minute potluck to make the final night feel more like a party. For many of them, promises about the post's future were overshadowed by a sense that too few appreciate what's being lost.

"It's really sad that this place is going," Sonny said from his seat at the bar. "I get really upset about the whole situation."

Only a handful of veterans, and none of the post's leaders, attended the send-off. They were joined by a larger number of "auxiliary" members — people with relatives who served overseas — as well as unaffiliated devotees of the Burlington-area karaoke circuit. Together, all 30 or so nestled around the bar and at folding tables, drinking under the establishment's bright lights.

On the back wall, next to a jukebox that had gone dark, the names of 200 or so current members and dozens of deceased ones were etched into nameplates inside a glass case. The rosters appeared to be out of date. A shuffleboard table hugged the long wall, as did an empty table and chair left to honor prisoners of war and service members missing in action. The narrow entryway was lined with pamphlets for drug treatment, suicide prevention, counseling and housing services.

The Pomerleau real estate family constructed the building for the VFW in 1980; in exchange, the Post gave the Pomerleaus its historic, columned Follett House. (The white Greek Revival mansion overlooking Lake Champlain on College Street had needed extensive repairs.) The city donated the South Winooski Avenue land for the VFW, as Nancy Paquette Austin, daughter of then-mayor Gordon Paquette, pointed out between sips of her martini.

But now the clubhouse needed its own repairs, and its heyday as a social hub had passed. There used to be dances in the ballroom. There used to be live music. Lately, even the small TVs behind the bar had gone dark; the VFW dropped its cable subscription a while back. A bucket of break-open tickets remained as a mindless diversion.

"This place," Chris reminisced, "used to be..."

"Packed!" Sonny finished his thought.

Sonny wore a black leather jacket that made him look like a 73-year-old Fonzie, as a younger woman told him playfully. Chris, 40, has a round face and a scorpion tattoo on his right shoulder.

"It's sad. It's sad," Chris repeated. He plunked down cash for five more break-open tickets, determined to win the $204 jackpot on the canteen's final night.

Coming to the VFW bar, Chris said, is like going to a wedding reception: Everyone knows each other and feels safe enough to let loose. "That's this place, every frickin' weekend!" he said. In a town bursting with $8 pours and bougie bar snacks, the VFW offered PBR, poured from a can into a glass, and microwaved personal pizzas, for $3 each.

Down the bar, 73-year-old Ozzie Mendez, a Vietnam vet, sipped beer quietly as he tried to hear his friends speaking over performances of Charlie Daniels and Alanis Morissette songs. He often spent Friday and Saturday nights at the canteen.

"We sit there together. We drink together. We have a shot together," he said with a smile.

"We don't really talk about our war stories or anything like that," the man sitting next to Ozzie, Jeff Bissonnette, explained. "It's just mutual respect ... It's very comfortable here."

Jeff, 46, sees the camaraderie among people who understand each other as "almost like a form of counseling." He was stationed in South Korea in the '90s. He tries to convince veterans of his age to go to the local VFWs, but many aren't interested.

The tunes stopped briefly so Lenora Travis, an auxiliary member, could pass roses to her favorite ladies and a photo book to Susan Brennan, president of the auxiliary. The white-haired Susan, in a floral jacket, drank nonalcoholic Budweiser and idly cracked break-open tickets. She tends bar sometimes and called the final bingo game last Friday night. "I cried all day yesterday," Susan said.

As dessert cakes were plated and passed around, Dawn Burdo was getting warmed up. She tapped out an elegy to the VFW for her Facebook page — "A Fair Well To a Great Place," she wrote — then gripped the microphone and sang the Afroman classic "Because I Got High." Her waist-length silver hair swayed gently behind her as she sang. Dawn's next selection was "Buzz, Buzz," a song about a woman's vibrator. She'd recruited a partner to sing the suggestive onomatopoeia alongside her.

Chris, meanwhile, was in deep — too deep — on break-open tickets. As the canteen's 11 p.m. closing time neared, the bucket of unopened tickets was nearly empty. Hundreds had been sold. Then Sonny won the jackpot, and Chris was beside himself.

Soon, the DJ himself was singing a convincing rendition of Don McLean's "American Pie."

But something touched me deep inside
the day the music died.

Chris, Sonny and some others were discussing whether they might walk to another bar downtown once the song ended. They wanted to carry on together a little longer.