Howard Gordon Clewell resigns because of his stolen valor (Updated)
WISC reports that Howard Gordon Clewell, the historian of the Wisconsin Department of the American Legion and the husband of the Department Commander, resigned his position when he was busted for wearing badges that he didn’t earn while he was in the Army;
Howard Gordon Clewell served in the U.S. Army decades ago, but numerous pictures submitted to Legion officials recently showed him wearing a hat displaying a Special Forces Pin, a Ranger tab, a Special Forces Unit Patch, a Combat Infantryman Badge and Master Parachutist Wings that he did not earn during his time in the service. He was serving as the Legion’s historian when he gave up his position and his membership with the Legion.
[…]
“Unfortunately, Mr. Clewell embellished his military service and was caught,” wrote Amber Nikolai, the department adjutant, of The American Legion in Wisconsin, in an email to News 3. “When (he) was questioned about his military service and whether he had earned the badges/insignias displayed on his cap in photographs, he immediately offered an apology, tendered his resignation and canceled his membership with the American Legion.”
At least in Wisconsin, veterans are vigilant in regards to stolen valor.
The reporter, Adam Schrager, sends us an update to the story, his wife’s point of view;
“(He) had built a stellar veteran career on a foundation of lies–that he had not only fought in Vietnam in Special Forces but that he had received meals for his heroics,” she wrote. “ALL lies and he finally admitted he has been lying since high school.”
“Howard Clewell was actually an Army veteran who was stationed in Germany as a caseworker. He dropped this bomb, packed his bags and walked out of our lives.”
[…]
Laurel Clewell, meanwhile, said any assertion she “should have known” is misguided and that she’s disappointed by how she’s been treated within Legion circles, even by her mentors, as a result. She said she has been fighting cancer this year and that battle gives her the strength to persevere.
“(His) deceit and lies have affected my kids, grandkids, family and friends,” she wrote. “I will never recover from the lies and the disrespect that Howard has shown the veterans who work hard to accomplish what he has stolen.
“In the end, all I have is the truth. I’ve survived cancer this year, a difficult work environment and now the epic lies of a life partner. At this point, I don’t much care who believes me. I’ll live.”
Category: Phony soldiers, Valor Vultures
Howard Clewell, historian of the American Legion and HUSBAND of the Department Commander??
O…..kay
As a retired CSM she probably didn’t pick up on all the uniform violations in a quest to get police call done and the grass mowed. In fact if he pinned it all to a PT belt she would have seen the belt nodded with approval and moved on.
That’s what made me laugh. If anything, she should have been the first to crush his ass.
This is from the official bio. I don’t know about Reserve CSM’s, but I can tell you a retired female Arkansas Guard CSM I know would have performed transgender surgery on this guy for free. From the bio:
Commander Clewell volunteered for the U. S. Army in March 1976. Laurel also completed many military courses and she retired as a Command Sergeant Major for the 389th Engineer Battalion in March 2012 with 36 years of total service in the Active and Reserve.
EEEEyeah, I kinda thought the same. I wonder if he bullshitted about his Military Service to his Wife and if so I’m quite sure she’s a LITTLE MORE than pissed off at him!
But Howard Gordon Clewell AT LEAST had enough spinal cord to resign and acknowledge his chickenshittery (OR his Wife made him do so) unlike Richard Hollingsworth; VFW Post 735 valor thief commander who continues his con games in a Bernathian fashion.
so you are saying that Richard Hollingsworth continues to be a valor thief and liar?
You are also saying that VFW Post 735 continues to aid him in his lies?
Richard Hollingsworth = valor thief and liar
VFW Post 735 = bad faith
Got it…
I copy:
so you are saying that Richard Hollingsworth continues to be a valor thief and liar?
You are also saying that VFW Post 735 continues to aid him in his lies?
Richard Hollingsworth = valor thief and liar
VFW Post 735 = bad faith
CONFIRMED Ret_25X, Read you five by five!!!
I’m a little slow this AM…
so you are saying that Richard Hollingsworth continues to be a valor thief and liar?
You are also saying that VFW Post 735 continues to aid him in his lies?
Richard Hollingsworth = valor thief and liar
VFW Post 735 = bad faith
Just making sure we are all on the same page?
so you are saying that Richard Hollingsworth continues to be a valor thief and liar?
I copy, will forward:
You are also saying that VFW Post 735 continues to aid him in his lies?
Richard Hollingsworth = valor thief and liar
VFW Post 735 = bad faith
BREAK BREAK
Richard Hollingsworth of Pocatello Idaho has gone full potato.
END MESSAGE
All stations this net;
Authenticate that:
Richard Hollingsworth continues to be a valor thief and liar?
You are also saying that VFW Post 735 continues to aid him in his lies?
Richard Hollingsworth = valor thief and liar
VFW Post 735 = bad faith
gooooooooooooooogle fame…
it’s what’s up….
It’s been a long day, and I was out of the house and away from the computer til an hour ago.
Are you saying that: Richard Hollingsworth continues to be a valor thief and liar?
You are also saying that VFW Post 735 continues to aid him in his lies?
Richard Hollingsworth = valor thief and liar
VFW Post 735 = bad faith
That has to be MORE THAN EMBARASSING to his wife the Post Commander!!
It said wisconsin was “vigilant” my ass! I am in Arizona and they are really Vigilant here, before they would let me join, a lady from the Legion came to my home, checked all my Navy records THEN allowed me to join….’THAT’S VIGILANCE”….God bless’em!
So that’s all it takes in AZ these days to get a lady to visit your home? Maybe I should VA back to AZ???
The commander is a woman, his wife. Thank God.
If it was a Cali Legion, all bets are off. Lol
He goes by “Gordy” Clewell.
Here is his Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Gordon.Clewell
He WAS the Historian of American Legion Post 457 in Mequon, Wisconsin. They did the right thing by booting him out. KUDOs to them.
https://www.facebook.com/American-Legion-and-Auxiliary-Post-457-Mequon-WI-1069489426528349/
I am informed that I was wrong, so am correcting a mistake.
Howard Gordan “Gordy” Clewell was NOT the Historian of the American Legion Post 457 in Mequon, Wisconsin, but rather, the Historian of the Wisconsin American Legion.
My apologies to American Legion Post 457 for my mistake.
Heh, the department historian who made up his own personal history; nice going there, dumbass…
Inflating one’s accomplishments while serving seems to be the “In” thing to do these days. And the VFW as well as A L still stonewall those demanding a clean DD 214 for all members. Membership means more dues-paying members. Don’t these different Posts realize how unattractive they become when some elected clown gets exposed? Bad for membership and I assume exceptionally embarrassing for the one being exposed as a phony. The real thing that bothers me is the fact that the dude was outed, admitted it, and he immediately dropped his membership with the A L. At least it was refreshing to see someone who realized he was up against a brick wall and admitted without the ego serving one Richard Hollingsworth. So how long do any of you think this has been going on in these organizations? Better yet, how long do you think this is going to continue?
I concur. I refuse to join VFW, AL, or DAV because they allow so many fraudulent enrollees and allow them to be in the upper leadership without verification.
My old AL post had a number of members on the roll who were knowingly recruited by the post commander to inflate membership. I left 8 years ago, and have never been back.
I belong to all three, so you refuse to join agencies that do one hell of a lot of good for veterans because of a few a.h.’s they eventually weed out? You need to analyze you opinions….in MY opinion!
I dunno…my old post commander and former bestie is a muckity-muck in the legion to this day, and the shitbaggery he condoned is still something I see, soooooooo… yeah.
Badges that he did not earn and would eventualy be caught. Not a Clew,well he did get caught. WTF is wrong with these peeps* (*Curtis Sliwa slang) As you know about my getting my mail order ARNG cap with the Expert Infantry Badge I did not earn and did not know it was sewn on. I told the person taking the order to embroider an infantry symbol and little did I know that she would have the EIB embroided on the cap. Took me over an hour to razor it off. Boy, I love to make a short story long this Friday morning.
Slight bit of confusion here, which in no way should be taken to support anyone claiming unearned awards or accolades.
Pins folks put on service org covers equate to stolen valor? Obviously, what one puts on an actual military uniform is required to be accurate and reflect only what one has earned. But pins on a hat? Really??
Been to a bunch of military type conferences where people exchange pins. What are we supposed to do with them when they reflect organizations to which we have never belonged in places we have never been?
Now, if this clown SAID he was things he never was (and suspect he did just that or he would not have resigned so quickly), that is stolen valor. Of course.
And the organizations could well require that only things individuals earned be on the hats. In which case he should be hammered. Of course.
My take is, since in the Legion and VFW your cover with pins is used to reflect your military service and qualifications, this qualifies as SV.
Never found that as a stated rule, but it probably is at least a tradition. Personally, I don’t like the hats that are covered with pins, but that’s just me.
My VFW uses black slacks with a long sleeved white shirt embellished with official VFW accouterment as its uniform. Nobody wears military uniforms. The only individual items are the collar brass designating individual’s qualifying war (required) and ribbon rack (optional). A few have their military rank on the official hat.
That’s how I view the pins on Legion covers, as a reflection of your military service and qualifications, so I have to agree this qualifies as SV…
Not to mention what he might have said around the beer fountain. The news account juxtaposes his pin story with SV law, suggesting that there’s a basis for charges. In other words, it would be easy to think he is accused of statutory SV, but he is not. He’s accused of the traditional SV–wearing shit not earned.
That was my assumption as a kid at my dad’s VFW Post. His sole pin was his B-17 Gunner wings. I had them framed.
Everyone knows that you have to have a long tab to be a unit historian.
BYE, Asshole.
Nice to see someone take a stand and hold someone accountable.
Well, Commander Wifey had to look the other way–and keep looking that way, until he was caught.
She ought resign too for ignoring it
*oughta
Turns out she didn’t know, and now has kicked him to the curb and is filing for divorce.
Bye, Felica.
This is a horrible sentence:
““Unfortunately, Mr. Clewell embellished his military service and was caught….”
It’s only illegal if you get caught. 😉
Gordy was outed by a real special ops operator without his even knowing he’d been found out. And Laurel was standing right there next to him when it happened. This is not the end, by no means. Be sure to come to the Wisconsin American Legion Summer Conference to witness the ‘coup de grâce’; it will be epic!
Here’s an interesting video all about Ms. Clewell… shows her “I love me” wall, errrr home office, with the obligatory framed infantry unit guidon…
http://www.wearegreenbay.com/news/video/hometown-hero-laurel-clewell_20170922110932/816416495
Yeah… Check out the “I Love Me” command car. The only thing missing is about 11 antennas.
“I love me command car”…I LoL’d.
This tablet is so retarded. “the”.
She did 4 years active duty in the AGR. I almost shot coffee out of my nose.Also “…rear DET commander in 2008”. (Rolls eyes)
What are you saying there? What about the 4 years AGR?
Not defending her, just wondering what your apparent outrage is about.
AGR…while “active duty” isn’t like being on–you know–active duty.
It is more like being a full time reservist who works at the unit when no one is around.
My experience with Army Reserve AGR personnel is that 99% of them make the rest look bad.
Thanks for the explanation. My experience with AGR’s is that they looked/acted just like everyone else. In the ANG, I didn’t know who they were unless they told me.
That may have changed since I retired and I understand that most of the technicians (full-time) have been replaced by AGR’s.
It never did make much sense to me that on any given day I might be surrounded by folks who all were doing their jobs but were getting paid from so many different pots of money.
Not outraged…just amused. I don’t give a shit what anybody says about AGR’s being like active duty, it just isn’t. Not by a shot. I knew some good AGR’s, but they were few and far between. An awful lot of the time I simply reffered to them as being welfare recipients in uniform.
Whether you approve or not, it isn’t “like” active duty, it IS active duty. AGR’s (unless it has changed) are for real active duty assigned to a reserved forces unit, subject to the same rules, regs and responsibilities as all other active duty folks.
Some Army AGRs are also assigned to Active Component units, MTOE and TDA to include Pentagon and JCS assignments. In some Army Reserve units, they get deployed for either real world missions, i.e. humanitarian or in a combat zone as well as exercises.
Have met and worked with some of these AGRs, Enlisted, NCOs and Officers. Did not know they were Active Guard Reserves until they shared that info with me. Always thought AGRs stayed in the US with their Reserve unit. When asked why some of them were on those real time missions or exercises, some (not all) answers were ” Because the Soldiers who drilled once a month on weekends or 4 weeks out of the year did not want to do it.”
Hard Charger!
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I don’t know about the American Legion as a general rule for their membership rules, but I will say that I had to have a DD-214 to join a Texas chapter and my Wisconsin chapter too before I moved down here.
Which is just fine with me.
The American Legion does a lot of great work on the paperwork end of things as a representative for Veterans trying to wend their way through the morass, “swamp” of VA paperwork, hospitalizations and disability snafu’s.
In my own case they did a lot for me by helping me when I was pretty much down and out after my last severe health scare that gave me six months to live.
That was in 2010 and I am still waiting for my six months to be up…
The VA has saved my life three times and my soul twice.
Protesting them by not joining stops them from helping those Veterans that do need help…
they are also a big help when the politicians that always seem to want to take away our benefits from us to give to “siad victim group” like when slik willy wanted to turn out hospitals over to welfare queens…
Went over like a turd in a coffee cup…
Best endorsement of a VSO I ever read.
Turd.
This tablet is so retarded. “the”.
So his lies go back to high school…interesting…
It seems that faker boy is older than his (soon to be ex) wife.
So here is how I think this went down.
Gordie there built a fake resume in the 1970s that became accepted in the small town setting he was in. She meets him and has no reason to suspect he is faking it all.
Because his fakery had been accepted for so long, he “upped the game” in recent years and got caught out. But because she had never heard any other story about him other than the fake story she couldn’t see it.
Now she can. Her actions from here will demonstrate her integrity and honor.
It seems to me that she accepted the historical narrative accepted in the community and gave it no more thought. We shall see what she does from here.
Agreed, that’s a very plausible scenario. They’d only been married for four years, so I can believe that she didn’t know.
I have known Laurel for over 40 years beginning when she began an AGR tour with our Reserve Unit and I still consider her a good friend today. I also know her to be one of the most honest, caring and loyal friend that a person could have. She is also very smart and intelligent. That being said, it goes to show how slick her husband must be to pull the wool over her eyes as well as everyone else. They have only been married 4 years or so and I have only met him twice so I can’t really say much about him. My heart goes out to Laurel and I know that she is strong enough to weather this. I don’t know if these different Veterans groups have a vetting process for memberships but perhaps this will open up a few eyes.
The Facts:
She was adjutant and Commander in the same Appleton Post. Had an affair with him while he was married; caused his divorce. Married him only four years ago. Had the responsibility to vet him when she appointed him finance chair at the post level and then again at the state level when she appointed him historian. Not to mention the vetting she should have done as a prospective spouse. In other words, she knew full well he was a liar; and she abetted him along the way. And now she’s lying to save her own skin. It’s her M.O.
I’ve known Laurel for many years now. She is a power hungry, glory hog who looks for any opportunity to promote herself. Not that it matters but she is also pretty racist.
I also know for a fact she knew about this. It had been brought to her attention 2 or 3 years ago. She CHOSE to ignore the truth.
Any real veteran who actually served only needs a few minutes of conversation to sniff out the bullshit. She had years.
I also just love how she brought up her cancer to try to distract us from her incompetence.
Two out of three character reviews of those knowing the wife personally speaks loads for her (lack of) integrity. These days it seems like the best and most convincing liars worm their way to the top. Understandably so, with those individuals normally being in the 20% who carry the work load while the rest sit on their asses and bitch. The character problem comes to light pretty clear when you see power hungry people fighting and clawing their way to the top. Personally knowing one A L post which had been led for many years by what everyone thought was the greatest guy in the world. Not long after he died, a financial audit was conducted. You guessed it, he had been dipping into the proverbial cookie jar for years, but due to his likability no one even gave it a thought. The story by Not a Nonner was a warning too many forget for whatever reason. Often said over & over in these parts, “If he/she will cheat with you, eventually they will cheat ON you.” My point being sooner or later it’s possible/probable that irregularities will show up and the Post will come to see the real truth. That “I love me” garbage will one day be the tip of the ice burg….COUNT on it!
All marriage licenses should require a signed SF-180 from both parties.
Love should not be blind but it is and the results are often devastating.
Hell, I’d even hire PI before the first date.
More Fact:
Laure complains about a “difficult work environment” since becoming the State Commander of the Department of WI American Legion. The isn’t a manure trailer in the State that can haul that crap! She came into the office and immediately became so unprofessional, disruptive and counter-productive in the headquarters and towards the headquarters staff that the Department Executive Committee had to intervene on an emergency basis. At that point, the DEC banned Laurel from the HQ building unless she was summoned by the DEC for official business! That’s right, the State Commander is banned from the State HQ! These are not traits of a normal, nor trustworthy person!
Hey Jarhead,
Would you be surprised to know that the Wisconsin American Legion has, in the past, elected a State Commander who was discovered, some 23 years later, after his death, to have been discharged from the U.S. Army, DISHONORABLY, by a General Court Martial, and that the Wisconsin American Legion provided graveside honors to this despicable fraud?