Our history
A fixture on North Hanover Street
Post 101 formed on July 24, 1919. The first meeting was held at the Carlisle Armory on North West Street — the building now owned by St. Paul's Lutheran Church.
The post moved around town for decades before settling into its current home in the 1950s, where it's been part of the Carlisle landscape ever since. More than a century on, the work hasn't changed much: supporting veterans, active-duty service members, and their families through fellowship, service, advocacy, and events.
The post's historic preservation committee is working through the archives now. As that material gets organized, it'll go up here.
Our namesakes
Who this post is named for
In 2022 the post became a memorial post honoring two local veterans. Their names are on the building, and that's the standard we try to keep.
Master Sergeant Scott Rowen Ball (February 25, 1969 – August 27, 2007) was a Carlisle-area soldier, Pennsylvania State Trooper, and Pennsylvania Army National Guardsman. A 1988 graduate of West Perry High School, he served as an active-duty soldier before joining the Pennsylvania Army National Guard in 1992. In civilian life he served Lower Merion Township as a police officer and later the Commonwealth as a State Trooper assigned to Troop H in Carlisle, where he was a motorcycle patrolman and field training officer. While on military leave and deployed with the Guard’s 55th Brigade in Afghanistan, he was killed August 27, 2007, at Forward Operating Base Naray from wounds suffered when his embedded training team was attacked during combat operations near Jalalabad. He was 38. He is remembered with a memorial avenue in Lower Merion Township and as a namesake of American Legion Ball-Correal Memorial Post 101.
First Lieutenant Vincent M. Correal of Carlisle was a United States Marine Corps helicopter pilot. A Dickinson College football player (1987–1990), he later served at Marine Corps Air Station Tustin with Helicopter Training Squadron 302 as a co-pilot and assistant embarkation officer. On September 5, 1994, while on a personal flight in a civilian aircraft rented from the El Toro Aero Club, he was killed when the plane crashed on takeoff from Truckee-Tahoe Airport in California. He was in his mid-twenties. His wife, Karen Elizabeth Schaefer-Correal, died in the same accident. He is buried in Carlisle at St. Patrick’s Cemetery Annex. Dickinson College awards a football MVP trophy in his name, and he is a namesake of American Legion Ball-Correal Memorial Post 101.
Photographs