The Harlingen VFW post was falling apart. The community raised millions to rebuild it

HARLINGEN — What does it take to build a new 10,000-square-foot Veterans of Foreign Wars building?

For VFW Post 2410 in Harlingen, it took one exceptionally inspired contractor who motivated his industry and his community to be exceptionally generous.

It started, to hear Noble Texas Builders President and CEO Rene Capistran tell it, when he sat down to watch KRGV-TV after barbecuing about four years ago.

Capistran, an army veteran, saw Rudy Mireles start reporting a story on VFW Post 2410 in Harlingen and assumed he was about to watch some sort of uplifting tale about the Rio Grande Valley veteran community.

Instead Mireles reported on a veteran community on the verge of dissolution.

Post 2410’s 87-year-old building was — and remains — decrepit. 

When it rains, water drains into the building. The paint is chipped and cracked. The flooring’s warped. 

The deteriorating conditions threatened the role the building played as a second home for many of its veterans and the role those veterans played in community service activities.

Moved, Capistran met with members of the post and took a look at the building. He told them bluntly that the whole thing would have to go.

That wasn’t great news. 

On the bright side, Capistran and Noble offered to help the post build a new building.

The project found its financial footing in the form of about $850,000 worth of federal funding that Congressman Vicente Gonzalez helped secure.

Then Cameron County got involved, pitching in $150,000.

It was a good start, but it still put the dream for a rebuild far short of the project’s ultimate $2.5 million or so price tag.

The project needed grassroots support and found it at Noble’s charity arm’s 2024 fishing tournament.

It had invited veterans from the post, and Capistran wanted to get the post a little recognition — and hopefully a few donations.

Impromptu, he started talking about veterans and the post during the tournament’s live auction, encouraging attendees to pitch in.

The first was a concrete company that offered to donate all the concrete for the project.

Then a concrete installer stepped up, saying they’d install all that concrete for free.

Roofers, electricians, plumbers, masons — subcontractors and suppliers from virtually every aspect of the construction business — started speaking up.

“I watched this snowball grow and grow and grow,”  Noble Co-founder Manny Vela said about the event. “And for those of you who were there, the only word that comes to mind that I think accurately describes what we witnessed that night, it was electric.”

By the end of the night the tournament had raised over $1.5 million for the project, practically a whole building’s worth of donations.

It was enough to put the rebuild on the road to reality. Other donations and permitting help from the city of Harlingen got the project to the finish line, and the effort culminated in Monday’s groundbreaking.

“This groundbreaking represents the future of our veterans and a place they can call home for generations to come,” Capistran said. “It will be a place for fellowship, healing, mentorship and pride. A place where the spirit of service will continue to live long after today.”

Monday’s groundbreaking was emotional for members of Post 2410 who have seen their chapter teeter for years on the edge of going.

“Our post — our home — has been through so much…” Trey Villela, U.S. Marine Corps Veteran and Post Commander, said Monday before choking up for a moment.

Renderings of the new building don’t look like something cobbled together from donations.

Those renderings look like what you’d want ideally in a VFW building meant to last a generation or two: sleek and modern, with walls painted to match the colors in the VFW’s logo.

There’s even landscaping and windows, which aren’t strong points of the current building.

The groundbreaking was also tinged by just a touch of sadness. It means Post 2410 is about to get that fancy new home, but it also means the only home it’s ever had is about to be torn down.

The new building won’t have water draining inside every time it rains. 

But it also won’t have the camouflage-painted fence of the current building. It won’t have the vines draped under the eaves that make the building look like it’s practically part of the landscape. It probably won’t be quite so snug and dim inside.

Post 2410’s members have patched and repaired the current building so many times over the decades that there’s a lot of their sweat in its timbers.

“When the time comes, it will be difficult to see it go,” Villela said.

Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr. said he’s not sure that the old building will be as gone as it seems.

The heart of the post will stay alive in its current and future veterans, he said, and they’ll keep playing their role in the community.

“I know that there’s some sentiment that when this building is razed and is no longer there, to make room for the new one, there will be a lot of heartfelt loss,” Treviño said. “But the reality is, the structure, the current structure — that has been there in some shape or form since 1939 — it’ll still remain there in the hearts of each and every one of our veterans and anybody who comes in.”