Happy New Year 2026
Greetings from the Town of Veteran Historical Society.
Every year we keep getting better and better! Our great core group of volunteers and members made it through another
successful year and we keep making great progress with our endeavors.
We must thank our Fundraising Chairman, Anita
Hesser for all her efforts. Our bake sale, and Craft Fair in November 2025 was our most successful one to date! We earned
more money than ever before! As we get more adept at hosting such an event, we get better at it and continue to make money
to keep our Town of Veteran Historical Society thriving. It was a great Saturday, with lots of baked goods, our quilt raffle
with a beautiful Americana quilt made and donated by our member Anita Hesser and Christmas gifts from our crafters and vendors.
Our volunteer bakers and volunteer helpers came through with flying colors again. The Horseheads American Legion
on Old Ithaca Rd Horseheads N.Y. is a great venue for our Craft & Vendor Fair so we have booked our 2026 date there also.
Start watching around April for more information. If you know anyone who is a crafter or vendor, be sure to have them watch
for our flyers and email ash10@cornell.edu to reserve a space as soon as you see flyers. Our Doug's Fish Fry to Go was also a success and earns us much need money from
all their local followers.
Our third ongoing major fund raiser is the Returnable Can and Bottle deposits.
Our returnable Can and Bottle container is in place for your convenience at Veteran Grange 1108
777 Ridge Road Horseheads. We will return them for you, just drop your empty, bagged bottles in the
container and all the moneys will be used to better the Town of Veteran Historical Society. Help us to continue our goals
and help the environment at the same time!
FLX Gives happened again in November of 2025. FLX gives
us the opportunity to accept donations through credit cards. Your donations gave us the opportunity to add much needed money
to our building fund for our future maintenance. We did not receive as much as last year however, every dollar counts toward
our goals!! We continue to upgrade our building using the monies from the Tioga Downs Community Foundation
2024 Grant. The new concrete, ramp, handicapped landing and pillars have been installed and make the front of the
building more handicapped accessible. In 2026 we have a contractor and paint company scheduled for Spring, Summer to work
on the front of our building to bring it back to its 1914 glory! These generous community program opportunities are what help
keep the small 501C3 organizations alive. We so appreciate these companies and donors that keep us looking forward to our
goals. Thank You!
This year is the 20th year anniversary of the Historical Society. We
have made great progress in our goals to better the Society. As most of you know we are a 501C3 tax exempt
organization. We always need your help. Your old pictures, artifacts or stories pertaining to our area and your moneyed items
are tax deductible for you the donor. We will be working on a new book on the 14 schools that were a large part of our rural
community. If you went to one of the Town of Veteran schools or know someone that did, we would love to hear from you. We
would love to include pictures that you may have and antidotes and experiences that you had as a rural kid that we can include
in our book! Please contact Tim Rodabaugh at veteranny@yahoo.com with any information you would like to share, or give me a call at 607-739-0753 and we will contact you back. As always we
need your help. As members please get involved with whatever expertise you may have that can help us, whether its manual labor,
expertise in building or engineering and you can answer questions or you would just like to get involved, we always have something
for you to do! Tell your local friends, family and neighbors about us, we are always looking for new members and its only
$10 per year!
We continue to work on the historic Veteran Grange #1108 building. Our Building Committee has had meetings
and is working diligently towards getting this building in shape so we can have the first museum dedicated to the residents
of the Town of Veteran. Besides our past updates-- 2022 a new roof is in place and working great! The leaks have been fixed
and we were able to have the back stairwell fixed and a new steel door put on the back entrance. A new hot water tank was
donated and was placed in the building in 2023. We have renovated our bathrooms from two very dingy small bathrooms to one
large bright handicapped bathroom. Our new renovations in 2025 were a new steel door for the front of the building with
a digital access system, a new concrete slab poured along with a ramp and handicapped accessible landing, new pillars and
new structure support across the front. Our motto of "Keeping the Past Present" means more to us now than ever!
A lot of hard work has gone into this grand ole building. Our 20th anniversary year as an organized
society can only mean great things to come!
We welcome all members to join us and help us with ideas for the Society,
with grant writing, or ideas for fund raising, please let us know about them. We always have ongoing projects we are
working on since we now have a building and are trying to make it into a public building. Please share your expertise so we
can continue to "Keep the Past Present". We will have old fashioned work bees, more fund raisers and many opportunities
to get the Town of Veteran community involved. Let's celebrate our 20th Anniversary with a celebration!
We hope you will join us! A huge thank you goes out to the Veteran Grange #1108, whose members will still use the building
to hold Grange meetings and Grange fund raisers.
Our ongoing Cemetery Projects are doing great. Our cemeteries,
not recognized by the town, look fantastic as we mow and weed eat Parsons, Crandall, Turner and Greene Bentley so we can continue
to honor our past residents and honor our military. Keeping the abandoned cemeteries looking their best is an expense that
we feel is necessary. Watch for fund raisers throughout the year to help defray the cost of this expense. There are
many cemeteries in the Town of Veteran, many are private and on private property. We have had to pick and chose which we can
maintain due to money constraints but we take care of what we can to honor our Community.
You may now be a life member
or a family life member for a fee of $100 for an individual or $150 per couple/family under one roof. You may still be a regular
member for just $10 per year. Also available now are Gift Memberships, if you would like to give a gift of membership to a
friend or loved one please contact the Society. This new Life Member policy will help to eliminate mailing and will save the
TOVHS money in reminder mailings. Please be sure to update your information with us, so we can keep you informed as to our
activities. We would love to have new members or our regular members become life partners in our Society. Dues are due by
December of each year. We now also accept VENMO for your convenience when paying for membership, donations, or purchasing
our merchandise. @VENMO-glo777 is our code. Be sure to put in remarks what your payment
is for.
Our meetings have now changed and will be every month on the 3rd Wednesday. May, June,
July, August, September, and October will be at the Veteran Grange 777 Ridge Rd Horseheads, N.Y. The November, December,
January, February, March and April meetings will be at the Veteran Town Hall on Route 14 in Millport, N.Y. All meetings are
at 10AM. Remember we depend on members to help with our fund raising, planning, brainstorming, and volunteering and
to attend our meetings. Please put the 3rd Wednesday of every month on your calendars
and join us in helping to "Keep the Past Present" It is now more important than ever to volunteer, we will have
many opportunities now that we are the proud owners of the historic Veteran Grange 1108 building.
Please check our
website for updated meeting minutes and for upcoming events. www.townofveteranhistoricalsociety.com , and check out our Face Book page. Become a member today! It is only $10 per year due by December of each year or
now become a new life member. Just email us at veteranny@yahoo.com or if you have any questions please write us at Town of Veteran Historical Society 777 Ridge Rd Horseheads NY 14845 or feel
free to call me at 607-739-0753.
Have a great 2026!
Respectfully,
Gloria Campbell/President
