MORAN — Bill McAdam joined a select circle Saturday when he became the eighth 60-year member of Jones-Hardy American Legion Post 385 here.
“It’s quite an accomplishment,” said Gene Gardner, post commander, in a brief ceremony, noting that McAdam probably didn’t anticipate such a tenure soon after the Legion post was chartered in 1947.
McAdam, 81, joined the Air Force in 1951, receiving orders in early 1952 for deployment overseas to fight the Korean War.
McAdam escaped having to go abroad because he was needed in the family’s business due to his father’s failing eyesight. His father, John McAdam, had a construction company and lost his sight after his son enlisted. McAdam attempted to be discharged, to help with the company, but got nowhere with military brass.
On a visit home before going overseas, Bill and his dad visited Iola attorney Fred Apt, Sr. about a business affair. In course of the conversation Bill McAdam mentioned his efforts to return home for work.
Apt, well-connected from prior military service and who had friends in the Pentagon, said he would help. By day’s end Apt had secured the younger McAdam’s freedom from service.
That put McAdam back in Moran and working with his father in a construction company that had a simple start during the waning years of the Great Depression.
THE FAMILY lived in the Colony area when Bill was born Feb. 2, 1931 in the old St. John’s Hospital just east of Iola.
Farming in the wind-blown 1930s was a hard life and John McAdam one day decided to trade the family car for a construction-worthy truck, “and it went from there,” McAdam said.
The company grew through the years — Bill’s brother Tom joined when rock quarrying was added in the mid-1950s — until all was sold to Hunt Construction Group, Dallas, in 1996.
The McAdams regrouped, as McAdam LLC, but “we don’t do much anymore,” McAdam said.
He is sole owner of Super Eight Motel at the east edge of Iola, and “it’s for sale,” he said.
McAdam said he had been an active member of the American Legion until a few years ago when he started “to slow down a little,” and also was active in the Shrine, “going to a Shrine meeting somewhere about every night.”
“When I first joined the Legion, I was the rookie,” he reminisced. “All the other members were World War II veterans.”
As the new kid on the block, McAdam was assigned to carry the American flag in a parade down Moran’s main street — the strapping young member probably was the only one stout enough for the task.
“The flag had about a 20-foot pole and by the time the parade ended — down by Talley Chevrolet — I was worn out from the flag whipping all around,” and tugging on the pole, McAdam said. “I refused to carry it again, until they finally got another, smaller pole.”
