By Rod Lee

Bill MacLean was flicking on overhead TV screens in the lounge of the recently reconstructed Chester P. Tuttle Post 279 on Bancroft St. in Auburn the morning of January 24 when the visitor he’d been expecting arrived.

“You startled me,” he said, as he turned to offer a greeting.

Mr. MacLean has been finance officer for Post 279 for more than twenty years. A Vietnam War-era veteran who is now in his seventies, he comes across as accommodating and personable. He smiles easily. This is even truer right now, as a beautifully rebuilt Tuttle Post enjoys a reopening after being struck by a catastrophic fire the evening of March 15, 2019.

“There was a lightning storm and a rainstorm that night,” Mr. MacLean said, taking a seat at one of the tables in the lounge, which seats one hundred people. “We had a full house, three hundred-plus people. A firefighter was here and he smelled smoke and said ‘you’ve got a fire in the ceiling.’”

Fortunately, everyone got out before the roof collapsed. In further good news, firefighters saved “all our plaques of past Post commanders, flags, even that Budweiser sign,” he said, as he pointed to an object that has been a prized possession of the Post for many years.

“Anyone who comes to the Post knows that sign,” he said.

A portrait of Chester P. Tuttle, for whom Post 279 is named, also survived.

In 1909 Mr. Tuttle, who was born in Needham, moved with his family from a farm in New Hampshire to Auburn and worked on what is now the Adamsky Vegetable Farm until enlisting in the Army in October of 1917. He was wounded in France a year later and died the following day. He was buried in France.

In 1921 his body was brought home and services were held at the First Congregational Church, to which Mr. Tuttle belonged. He was interred in the Tuttle lot of Hillside Cemetery.

In July of 1922, a group of men, all veterans of “The Great War,” whose vocations after their combat days varied from chauffeur to engineer, met at the Stoneville schoolhouse and voted to establish an American Legion post in town.

With this history behind them, Mr. MacLean and members of Post 279 are genuinely proud of what was built “from the ground up” over the past two and a half years. The result is stunning, consisting of the Tuttle lounge, a separate spacious banquet hall and “seating for forty on the deck,” he said.

“This building is almost twice the size of what we had and the kitchen was set up to provide food for both the lounge and the banquet hall,” Mr. MacLean said. “It can serve both sides.”

A huge basement is available for storage, he said, in conducting what he calls “the nickel tour.”

Funding for the rebuild came from insurance “and generous donations from the community.” Nameplates on the back of stools at the bar in the lounge were sponsored by various individuals and are indicative of the support Post 279 has received.

Back in operation at full tilt, Post 279 is now the site of a range of daily activities and events in the lounge and banquet hall including weddings and bridal showers, meetings, darts, trivia nights, bike nights, karaoke, “one of the largest meat raffles in Central Massachusetts” on Saturdays, lunch and dinner Wednesday-Saturday and an all-you-can-eat brunch on Sundays.

Catering is provided by Karol Lebrun and her husband Tom of Leicester. Construction was handled by John Riel of J.R. Associates in Sutton.

“We’ve had a very, very positive response from the public,” Mr. MacLean said. “We had a tough nut to crack. We had to consider it a new business, with new hires.”

As demolition of the remains of the old Post started, “we said to ourselves, ‘we are going to be bigger and better’ but then came the delays. Weather, the cost of materials. We had a lot to contend with.”

Post 279’s veterans remain active on many fronts. “We do the Memorial Day parade, we are involved with the Scouts, we sponsored Legion baseball for fourteen years, we place cemetery flags, we serve as a color guard for funerals. We just signed a contract for a golf tournament in September at Blackstone National.”

Mr. MacLean smiles in relating that “I lost the slip for the paint color” for the walls of the lounge. Going through samples at the paint store, he was shown one that “looked like pickles and I said ‘I like pickles!’”

The resulting light green tint wasn’t everyone’s favorite to begin with.

But it grows on you, he said.

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Contact Rod Lee at [email protected] or 774-232-2999.