BETHEL LEGION POST TO BE NAMED FOR TARRANT
By The
News-Times
April 3, 2009
BETHEL -- For the scores of years the town's
American Legion post has existed, it has simply been known as Post
100.
At the end of the month, the post will be rechartered and called the
Joseph W. Tarrant Jr. Memorial Post 100.
"Naming a post you never take lightly," the post's adjutant, Skip
Clapp, said about the decision.
In this case, however, Clapp said the post found the right person to
have his name above the door of the Legion's Elizabeth Street
building.
Joseph "Joe" Tarrant, who died in January 2007 at age 78, was a
longtime active member of the post and served as its commander
twice, in 1966-67 and 1973-74. He was a National Guard and Army
veteran.
"Joe was always the guy," Clapp said about Tarrant's knowledge and
involvement at Post 100, which has 210 members. "If you didn't know
something, call Joe."
The Bethel post, Clapp said, was founded in the 1920s, but it lost
its charter sometime in the 1940s. On Oct. 2, 1958, the post was
rechartered and has operated continuously since that time.
"He probably was the one person who was here when we started,"
Clapp, 67, and a Navy veteran, said about Tarrant's early connection
with the post.
Tarrant was born in Norwalk, but moved to Bethel and went through
the Bethel school system, his wife, Joan Tarrant, 78, said. He
graduated from Bethel High School in 1946 and attended Central
Connecticut College, where he studied to be a teacher.
In 1957, seven months after they met, Joan and Joe married and
raised six children on Hickok Avenue.
After teaching eighth-grade math and science in Bethel in the late
1950s, Tarrant taught at Bethel High School, where he started a
work-study program.
"He was always proud of them," Joan said about the students in the
work-study program. "Quite a few ended up with businesses of their
own." One of them is Tom Keane, who graduated from Bethel High
School in 1977, and owns a landscaping business he began while in
school.
"He was very strict but very fair," Keane said of Tarrant. "He had a
very good rapport with the kids and knew a lot about them."
The program, Joan Tarrant said, was aimed at students who were not
college bound and helped them get into a trade or occupation. He
promoted the program to local businesses, which would hire and train
the students.
Joe Tarrant retired from teaching in 1992 but continued to be active
in Bethel as a member of the Democratic Town Committee and chairman of the Commission on Aging.
A constant in Tarrant's life was his connection to the military --
something that ran in his family. "His father and uncle were in the
National Guard," Joan Tarrant said.
Tarrant joined the Connecticut National Guard when he was still a
teenager and rose in the ranks. He was a brigadier general when he
retired from the Guard in 1985.
In the early 1950s, during the Korean War, Tarrant was in the Army
for about two years and trained as an officer and paratrooper.
Besides his American Legion membership, Tarrant was a member of the
Korean War Veterans Association.
Tarrant was an energetic worker for the American Legion. In 1978-79
he was the state commander, and for 25 years he headed the
Connecticut American Legion's Boys' State program, which provided a
crash course in government by involving junior high school boys in
an imaginary statewide political campaign.
"The Legion really meant a lot to him," Joan Tarrant said about her
husband's dedication to the organization.
That's why she happily agreed when members of Post 100 asked her to
approve naming the post in his honor.
"I was really thrilled for him," she said.
