This LaSalle St. building in downtown Aurora is the new home for the Roosevelt Post 84 American Legion post.

Aurora’s Roosevelt American Legion Post 84 is moving into a snug, but permanent downtown location after being reduced to meeting in restaurants and suffering a dramatic membership decline over the past two decades.

Now it hopes to grow again.

“We’ve been, you could say, a virtual post,” said post Commander Mike Eckburg, who took the leadership reins in 2014. “Right now we want to open a land presence. We’re planning to use it as a service office where we can actually meet with veterans.”

Post 84’s new home is a modest 160-square-foot room in the rear of a vintage, three-story LaSalle Street structure. It will also serve as space for Legion membership meetings.

It’s another encouraging development for a group that has had a membership bump to more than 300, thanks to recruitment efforts last fall by Eckburg plus state and national Legion support.

“Last fall I had this group from the department (state unit) and national come into town and we performed a membership drive,” Eckburg said. “We’re still working on following up, but we have now exceeded our goal.”

The American Legion is a 96-year-old national organization founded in Paris by World War I veterans and dedicated to serving members and performing community service. There are currently nearly 15,000 Legion posts around the country.

The Aurora post was formed in 1919 and is among the state’s oldest.  It was named for Quentin Roosevelt, the youngest son of President Theodore Roosevelt, who was killed in aerial combat during World War I.

“We’re a totally volunteer organization,” Eckburg said. “We’re totally for veterans, veterans’ families, we’re service oriented and we do a lot of charity work and service to the community.”

Local membership reached up to 1,500 during its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s and had its own post building east of downtown Aurora. But when hard times hit, the Legion was forced to sell.

“They had mismanagement and actually forced the American Legion to sell the post to pay off debts that had run up,” said Stephanie Kifowit, a current post official, former Marine and state representative from Oswego. “(Former commander) Doc Erickson took over the post and he’s really credited with taking the post from the lowest point possible and keeping it afloat.”

Erickson died in 2012 and Eckburg, a Navy veteran who served in Vietnam, took over in 2014.

As a Navy veteran who served during the Vietnam War, Eckburg said he’s among veterans from that era who overlooked the Legion. Now he wants to make up for it by helping jumpstart Post 84.

“It’s my generation — the Vietnam generation — who didn’t step up and fill in those shoes from the World War II and Korean War vets that really kept the Legion going,” he said. “So for the past 15-20 years or so I’ve joined a lot of veteran’s organizations and the American Legion has a special place in my heart.”

Commander Mike Eckburg stands in the middle of a small room that serves as a start for a group that went years without a physical home. (Suburban Chronicle photos)

Despite fewer members the post still serves as advocate for veterans, sponsors Aurora’s annual July 4th downtown parade, offers college scholarships and plans to renew ties with a local Legion band that marches in holiday parades and performs locally.

“We used to have (other) vibrant units and squads,” Eckburg said. “We also want to reinvigorate or revitalize or restart the American Legion (women’s) Auxiliary as well as another family component like the Sons of the American Legion.”

Post 84 officials also hope involvement in an annual LaSalle St. car show this summer will help raise awareness and funds to do even more.

There are plenty of potential members to draw from within a short drive. Kifowit said there are an estimated 20,000 veterans in the Fox Valley region.

“I believe having this small step forward you can have materials available for them, services available (and) maybe you can bring in an organization once a month,” Kifowit said. “Having an actual physical location is a benefit.”