STONEHAM – Leslie Gouin Dean was named national president of the Daughters of the Union Veterans of the Civil War at the organization’s 115th national convention in Iowa last week.
Dean, a resident of Stoneham and vice president of the Norway Business Association, has been a member of the group for 33 years. Following her mother and grandmother in membership, Dean is descended from James S. Small, who served in Company K of the 12th Maine during the Civil War.
The organization is one of the few remaining national organizations which requires its members to be of lineal descent of a veteran.
“It’s a little overwhelming,” Dean said of serving as president of the national organization. Over the coming year, her duties will include representing the organization at Rememberance Day in Gettysburg, Memorial Day services in Arlington Cemetery, and the national convention of the Daughters of the Confederacy.
“It’ll give us an opportunity to travel that we wouldn’t have had otherwise,” Dean said. She plans to bring her mother, Joyce Gouin, who nominated her for the presidency, along on her travels.
Dean’s final duty as president will be to preside over the national convention in August 2006, when a banquet to include all five Allied Orders of the Grand Army will be a high point of the weekend.
Because of problems stemming from “politics and personality,” Dean said, the five orders have not met in 50 years. She hopes the five organizations – the Daughters of the Union Veterans of the Civil War, the Sons of Veterans and its auxiliary, the Women’s Relief Corps, and the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic – will be able to eat together peacefully under her watch.
Last year, Dean was the chairwoman of the successful Operation Desert Stocking project. The project originally collected donations to send more than 200 Christmas stockings to the men and women serving in Operation Desert Storm in 1990.
In 2004 when Maine’s 133rd Engineer Battalion was called to duty, Operation Desert Stocking filled 627 Christmas stockings to send overseas. “Response was overwhelming,” Dean said.
One of the purposes of the Daughters of Veterans of the Civil War is to “support our institutions of freedom.” Dean, whose son, Andrew, serves in the Army, understands this to mean “all those looking out for our nation’s best interest.”
She said that donating care packages like the Christmas stockings is “the least we can do.”
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