WINDHAM – After meeting his promise to lead a renewal of the Windham Veterans Association, longtime association president Don Swander, who resigned the position last week, is now fulfilling another obligation to his wife, Camille.

“I had promised my wife long ago that when she retired from the Portland school system that I would retire from my leadership roles at the veterans center,” Swander said. “So she retired June 23 of this year and on June 26, I turned over my duties at the veterans center.”

The baton, which Swander carried through seven up-and-down years as head of the association, now passes to Toby Pennels, a Windham native, Sebago Lake Rotary Club member and 10-year veteran of the Windham school board. Pennels is also a 30-year veteran of the Maine Army National Guard who served two tours in Iraq and a peacekeeping mission to Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Pennels said he hopes to carry on where Swander left off, leading the organization that cares for the Windham Veterans Center and is made up of members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 10643 and American Legion Field-Allen Post 148.

The association is mainly in charge of keeping up the building and grounds of the Windham Veterans Center, located behind the Windham Mall in North Windham. Pennels’s day-to-day duties will include organizing the various rentals for events.

Several years ago, before Swander helped arrange a license to allow renters to bring their own alcohol, those rentals were few and far between. But now, they range from weekly Boy Scout meetings and veterans advocacy programs to large-scale wedding receptions.

By his own admission, the job has consumed Swander, who at the depths of the recession in 2008 and 2009 dipped into his own bank account to help keep the hall open so local veterans organizations could continue to meet their mortgage requirements. Now that his wife is retired and the association is in good financial health, Swander wants to enjoy his retirement.

“Weddings, birthday parties, that kind of thing is increasing every year, and gets to be more and more. And people are very, very happy with our facility,” Swander said, noting the exterior and interior improvements performed under his command. “It just makes me feel very, very good. I’m not leaving them with any major problems.”

Swander is especially proud of the Veterans Memorial Park, which is an elaborate landscaping project built over a number years featuring granite benches, a flagpole and plantings in front of the hall.

Swander is also proud to have helped draw more events to the center, including his favorite, the annual Veteran’s Day celebration that last year drew 200 people. He also helped found the monthly Texas Hold ’Em poker tournament the association started as a way to raise money.

While holding events help to bind the veterans together, Swander said they also raised people’s awareness that Windham had a large, 2,000-square-foot hall available for rental from which the proceeds went to support the local veterans. Swander said his goal through his seven years was to improve the building and grounds so people would think of the hall when it came time for needing a large space to hold their family parties and receptions.

“The only real potential source of income was the building itself, and we needed to improve the outside as well, and got a lot of help from local contractors to build Veterans Memorial Park, so that as you drive up the driveway, the first thing you see is this beautiful park and gardens,” Swander said. “People are impressed right away with the outside and we’ve been working on the inside, as well.”

Swander credits much of the financial health to the association’s treasurer, Ken Murch, who helped balance the books and even chipped in some of his own money during the downturn.

Swander will be missed, said Barry Lombard, commander of American Legion Post 148 and vice president at the Windham Veterans Association.

“Every time you turn around, you hear Don Swander’s name mentioned,” Lombard said.

“He has been such an inspiration to all the veterans and he has done so much, and he’s taken it upon himself to do nothing but what is in the best interests of the veterans in the region.”

Pennels is sad to see Swander go, as well.

“He’s given wonderful service to this organization, and he wants some flexibility with his schedule,” Pennels said. “God bless him, we’re going to miss him, but I think it was actually being tied down to the rental of the hall more than anything, and how that anchored him down on weekends.”

Pennels, busy in his own right as a candidate for Maine House of Representatives, is taking on the duty as a continuation and extension of his 30 years of military service.

“I am very pro-veteran, pro-service,” Pennels said. “Our veterans need to be supported, and I’m willing to do that. I committed a large part of my life being part of the armed services and I’m very proud of what I’ve done, but more proud of what others have done. And I believe service in the community is absolutely critical.”

Swander said he started to recruit Pennels about two months ago.

“I found Toby to be very capable,” Swander said. “He’s very capable of taking charge of things and getting things done.”

Swander, who said he intends to still remain active in both posts, but not in leadership roles, may not have taken the top spot at the veterans center had he been elected to the Maine House of Representatives in 2004. After retiring as a speech therapist for Portland schools in the early 2000s, Swander ran for the District 110 seat but lost to Mark Bryant, who is now serving his fourth term.

“I’ve thought a lot about this and decided [leading the veterans association] had to have been what I was supposed to do,” Swander said. “It is so hard for state legislators to really get what they want passed through as legislation, and because I didn’t get that job, when they approached me to take on these two leadership jobs, I just poured everything I had into it, and I’m glad I did.”

Standing in front of a sign his son Greg built as an Eagle Scout project, outgoing Windham Veterans Association president Don Swander, left, passes over the keys and appointment calendar for hall rentals to Toby Pennels, who has assumed the association’s leadership role. The association is in charge of the Windham Veterans Center, home of two veterans organizations. (Staff photo by John Balentine)