Two Marines, a brewery, and a hall on Haven Avenue.
Our Post carries three names. Two belong to Rhode Island Marines who were killed in action in Vietnam: Private First Class George J. Mack of Cranston and Private First Class Daniel R. Nelson of Coventry. The third belongs to the Narragansett Brewery, where the Post held its first meetings and where most of its original members worked.
The Post was chartered on April 19, 1971, five years after Mack was killed and two years after Nelson. The charter itself gives the Post its name, and it still hangs in the hall, between portraits of the two men.
“The post is named after United States Marines George J. Mack of Cranston and Daniel R. Nelson of Coventry, who were both killed in action while serving in the Vietnam War.”
Dwight Adams, Cranston Herald, November 13, 1986
Service details from the National Archives’ Vietnam War casualty records and the Virtual Wall (Mack, Nelson), the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund’s Wall of Faces, Find a Grave (Mack, Nelson) and Together We Served. Family details from the Cranston Herald, November 13, 1986. Portraits from the framed photographs that hang beside the Post’s charter in the hall.
A photo caption in Hazel B. Turley’s book Narragansett Brewing Company (Arcadia Publishing) describes the two men as sons of brewery workers. We haven’t been able to confirm that. If you knew either family, please tell us.
The Narragansett Brewing Company brewed its first beer in Cranston in 1890, and for most of the next century it was one of the city’s major employers. When Post 4651 was chartered in 1971, it met at the brewery itself. Most of the original members worked there. Among the Post’s members was Bruno Gallo, union foreman at the brewery from 1951 to 1981 and an officer of the brewery workers’ union local, who served on the Post’s House Committee. One of the Post’s charter members, Michael Giacheri, an Army veteran of World War II, was a shop steward at the brewery for many years. He went on to hold a number of Post offices and to serve as a VFW District Commander.
After several years the Post moved to larger quarters at 1196 Cranston Street. It was there by 1978, and still there in 1981, the year the brewery shut down and laid off its workers. The plant reopened for a few months in 1983, then closed for good.
By 1986 the Post had 120 members and was still growing. By that September its club license was listed at 7 Haven Avenue in Knightsville, the hall we still call home, and the Post dedicated the hall in November. City license lists show the address as the Cranston Social Club in 1978 and 1984.
The Post’s charter is dated April 19, 1971. It names the 51 veterans who founded the Post, each of them, in the charter’s words, “having served honorably in the Armed Forces of the United States of America outside its continental limits in foreign wars, insurrections or expeditions.” Among them was Vincent J. Garrahy, who was Commander when the hall on Haven Avenue was dedicated fifteen years later. Among them, too, were Frederick Mack and Robert Nelson, the fathers of the two Marines the Post is named for.
Listed alphabetically, as we read the names from the framed charter in the hall. If we have a name wrong, or you are family of a charter member, please tell us.
On Monday, November 10, 1986, after Cranston’s annual Veterans Day parade, nearly 200 members and friends gathered at 7 Haven Avenue to open the Post’s new headquarters and dedicate it to Mack and Nelson.
Both families were there: Frederick Mack, George’s brother, and Mary Nelson, Daniel’s mother. So were former Governor J. Joseph Garrahy, whose brother Vincent was Post Commander, Mayor Michael A. Traficante, and State Representative Irving Levin, whom the mayor honored with a local appreciation day for his work on veterans’ affairs.
Commander Garrahy told the Herald that the move had been a long time coming.
Smaller moments from four decades of the Cranston Herald.
A Navy man on active duty, a life member of a VFW post in California, stopped in to ask for directions while visiting Cranston. In a thank-you letter to the Post, printed in the Herald, he wrote that he and his wife “were treated to some of the greatest hospitality that we have ever experienced during our travels.”
The city named Post member John J. Judge one of Cranston’s five Outstanding Seniors for 1992. The Herald noted that he helped provide meals to the needy during the holiday seasons and had spent years coaching youth baseball, football and hockey.
Nelson-Mack VFW #4651 fielded a team in Rhode Island’s over-50 senior softball league. The 1992 season was a long one, with 2 wins and 16 losses by mid-July. By August 1994 the team was 18–8 and leading the league’s C Division.
Vincent J. Garrahy, the Post’s commander in 1986–87, was named an Assistant Inspector General of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States for the 1994–95 membership year by VFW Commander-in-Chief Allen F. Kent.
Herald editor Steve Loewenthal sat down at the Post with Fred Morrissey and Timothy O’Brien. On December 7, 1941, Morrissey was on gangway watch aboard the USS Avocet and O’Brien was aboard the battleship USS Maryland, moored beside the Oklahoma. Both manned anti-aircraft guns. “They gave too much to be forgotten,” Loewenthal wrote.
Post 4651 joined other Rhode Island VFW posts in sponsoring a luncheon for soldiers of the 443rd Civil Affairs Battalion before they left to join the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.
U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse visited the Post in January to update members on veterans’ legislation and hear their concerns.
The hall has served as one of Cranston’s polling places. The United Fly Tyers of Rhode Island met here every month in the late 1990s, and in 2013 the hall was the setting for a steak fry to benefit the Companion Animal Welfare Society.
This list is far from complete. These are the commanders we have been able to confirm so far.
If you are family of George Mack, Daniel Nelson or one of the Post’s charter members, a longtime member, or a former Narragansett employee, we would love to hear from you. We are looking for:
Sources. Cranston Herald: Sept. 20, 1978; Aug. 27, 1981; Sept. 25 and Nov. 13, 1986; Oct. 12, 1989; June 6, 1991; June 4 and July 16, 1992; Aug. 11 and Dec. 8, 1994; Dec. 14, 1995; Mar. 28 and Oct. 31, 1996; Aug. 7, 1997; Sept. 3, 1998; Feb. 10 and July 6, 2000; Dec. 11, 2003; Jan. 24, 2008; Sept. 8, 2011; Nov. 21, 2013. Cranston Mirror: Sept. 14, 1978; Sept. 13, 1984; Sept. 18, 1986. The Post’s charter (April 19, 1971) and Perpetual Post Charter (Nov. 1, 1991), on display in the hall. U.S. National Archives, Vietnam War casualty records for Rhode Island. The Virtual Wall. Hazel B. Turley, Narragansett Brewing Company (Arcadia Publishing). Brewery dates from Narragansett Beer’s company history. The Post’s recent years from “Local veteran aims to revive VFW Post 4651,” Cranston Herald, and “Sometimes, coming home is just the start of a soldier’s journey,” Warwick Beacon and Ocean State Stories, Nov. 11, 2024; Michael Giacheri’s obituary, Romano Funeral Home, March 2017; membership streamer from a letter to the Post Commander from VFW national headquarters, Aug. 6, 2026. Spotted a mistake? Let us know.