If you know AJ Fratto, you know it doesn’t take much to get him wound up.
The current commander of Geneva’s American Legion Winnek Post 396 is a self-professed “high-octane guy.” He also is big and bald and loud, travels as a body guard with country rock band Blackberry Smoke, and sometimes speaks in a rapid-fire stream of consciousness that commands the listener pay attention just to follow along. He also laughingly says he can be a “locomotive,” a “human hurricane,” and an “emotional force of love.”
That can all come across in one quick, 45-minute conversation — like the one we had recently.
He is indeed all of those things, but he also is incredibly passionate — about his family; about his friends; about his decorated service in the U.S. Navy; about his Italian heritage; about his hometown of Geneva; about his charity, AJs BraveHearts, which raises funds for animals, children, veterans and women in crisis; and mostly, these days, about Winnek Post 396.
So, if you really want to get him to kick things up a notch, into another gear, just mention the Legion.
“When I was with the Blue Angels,” he says of the Navy’s spectacular flight demonstration squadron, “I was in every city in America, every little town, every nook and cranny, and I was so proud because we here in little Geneva, New York, had the best Legion in the world. But when you grow up with it, you take it for granted, and you don’t know what it is until it’s gone.”
When AJ, who is 50 and married with three adult children, returned to his hometown three years ago he says he was “heartbroken” to learn that the magnificent Legion property — 13½ acres on Lochland Road high above Seneca Lake with a pavilion and pool where a young AJ learned to swim — was gone, having been sold by the membership because of dwindling savings accounts and membership combined with increasing maintenance fees.
The organization, which includes the Sons of the American Legion and the Auxiliary, purchased land on Routes 5&20 just west of the Salvation Army Thrift Store and built a new, much smaller 4,800-square-foot home that opened in November 2021.
However, when Fratto became involved and started going through financial records with his wife, Kristin, and Legion Treasurer Rena Nessler, they discovered that........