An Elberta woman known throughout Baldwin County for her quiet dedication to military veterans has been named the American Legion Auxiliary’s Volunteer of the Year for the entire state of Alabama. Judi Wheat received the honor during a recent district meeting held at American Legion Post 99 in Foley, with Alabama State American Legion Auxiliary President Carla Biniecki presenting the award in person.
According to family members who shared the news on social media, the recognition caught Wheat completely off guard. Biniecki praised Wheat’s body of work during the ceremony, describing her nomination submission as “phenomenal.”
The honor also puts Wheat in contention for the organization’s national Member of the Year title — she has already cleared the third round of judging at the national level and, in Biniecki’s words, is “holding her own by her accomplishments.”
A Legacy Rooted in Loss
Much of what drives Wheat’s volunteer work traces back to the memory of her late husband, Don Wheat, who served as a sergeant in the U.S. Air Force from April 1969 to February 1973 during the Vietnam War era and remained an active American Legion member for years afterward. He died on September 21, 2023. Family members say Wheat’s service to veterans since then has been carried out largely in his honor.
The American Legion Auxiliary, through which Wheat does her work, is one of the nation’s largest veteran service organizations, made up of the spouses, mothers, daughters and sisters of veterans. Its members staff the programs that keep American Legion posts running — from scholarship funds to girls state programs to the endless stream of fundraising that supports veterans and their families. Volunteer of the Year recognition at the state level places Wheat among the most active of thousands of Alabama members.
Wheat’s daughter, Shelley Patterson, wrote on Facebook that her mother has spent years quietly helping veterans without ever seeking recognition for it, and predicted that Wheat would insist other volunteers deserved the honor more than she did. Patterson described her mother’s compassion as simply part of who she is, day in and day out.
That self-effacement is common among the volunteers the Auxiliary honors most. The organization’s awards process depends on nominations that document a member’s work, often compiled by family and fellow members precisely because the volunteers themselves are reluctant to keep score. Wheat’s nomination, described by the state president as phenomenal, evidently cataloged years of steady service that she herself would likely have summarized in a sentence or two.
A Steady Presence at the Veterans Home
Much of Wheat’s volunteer work centers on the William F. Green Veterans Home, where she has built long-standing relationships with residents. She organizes monthly Bingo games for veterans at the Foley American Legion post and coordinates themed parties and events throughout the year.
The William F. Green State Veterans Home in Bay Minette is Alabama’s state-run nursing facility for veterans, housing residents from across the Gulf Coast region who need long-term care. Facilities like it depend heavily on volunteers to fill the social calendar that institutional care cannot provide — birthday celebrations, holiday events, games and visits that give residents something to look forward to beyond their daily routines.
Around the holidays, she also helps run a Christmas store that lets veterans choose and give gifts to their loved ones at no cost — one of several ways her commitment to the home extends well beyond any single scheduled event.
The Christmas store answers a need most people never consider: residents of a long-term care facility often have no way to shop for the people they love, and the inability to give a gift at the holidays weighs on them. A store stocked by donations and staffed by volunteers restores that ability, letting a veteran walk out with a wrapped present for a spouse, a child or a grandchild — chosen personally, paid for by nothing but gratitude.
Volunteers who sustain that kind of presence do it through repetition rather than grand gestures. A monthly Bingo night means driving to the post every month for years, keeping prize supplies stocked, and knowing the regulars well enough to notice when someone is missing. Themed parties mean planning, decorating, and cleaning up — most of it unglamorous work that happens away from any audience. It is exactly this consistency that the Auxiliary’s award structure is designed to recognize, and that family members say defines Wheat’s style of service.
The Post in Foley and the District Around It
The district meeting where Wheat received the honor brought Auxiliary members from across south Alabama to American Legion Post 99 in Foley, one of the active posts in a county with a deep military tradition. Baldwin County is home to thousands of veterans — retirees drawn to the Gulf Coast, former residents of the region’s military installations, and families with generations of service behind them — and its Legion posts serve as gathering points for that community.
Foley, the growing city at the heart of south Baldwin County, sits a short drive from Gulf Shores and Orange Beach and hosts the post that has become Wheat’s home base for volunteer work. The monthly Bingo games she organizes there raise funds and draw veterans and community members together, giving the post a recurring social event that doubles as support for its programs.
The state-level award structure of the American Legion Auxiliary moves nominations up through rounds of judging, from the local post to the district to the state, with the best advancing to national competition. Wheat’s candidacy for the national Member of the Year title — now past the third round of judging — puts her in a small group of volunteers from across the country still under consideration for the organization’s highest individual honor.
For the Alabama Auxiliary, having a member advance that far reflects the strength of the state’s veteran service community. For Baldwin County, it means the work being done quietly at a Foley post and a Bay Minette veterans home is being measured against the best in the country — and holding its own.
Why the Work Matters
For her family, the state honor represents something bigger than a running total of volunteer hours. As Patterson put it in her post, the award reflects the genuine care her mother has shown toward veterans and everyone around her throughout a lifetime of service — capping the message with pride in her mother’s continued dedication to Alabama’s veteran community.
The timing gives the honor additional weight. Don Wheat died in September 2023, and the award arrives as his widow continues the volunteer life they shared a commitment to. Auxiliary members often describe their service as an extension of the support they gave during a spouse’s military career, and for Wheat the connection to her late husband’s years in the Air Force is at the center of what she does.
The residents of the William F. Green Veterans Home are of a generation that includes her husband’s fellow airmen — men and women who served through Vietnam and its aftermath. Spending her time on their bingo games, their parties and their Christmas presents is, in the most literal sense, caring for the community he belonged to.
Whether or not Wheat’s name advances further in the national judging, the recognition has already done what such awards are meant to do: put a spotlight on work that was being done anyway, without expectation of notice. The veterans at her bingo tables, the families who received gifts from the Christmas store, and the members of her post know what she does. Now the rest of the state does too.
Volunteer opportunities at Alabama’s state veterans homes and American Legion posts across Baldwin County remain open to community members who want to follow the example — no experience required, only the willingness to keep showing up.
The Auxiliary’s recognition pipeline also carries practical benefits for the programs themselves. State award ceremonies draw members from across Alabama into rooms where successful volunteer projects are described in detail, giving posts like Foley’s a chance to showcase what works — a monthly bingo night that reliably funds veteran programs, a Christmas store that restores a sense of giving to residents of a long-term care facility. Ideas travel through those meetings the way they always have in volunteer organizations: person to person, demonstrated rather than prescribed.
Wheat’s story also illustrates the quiet pipeline between military families and veteran service. Spouses and family members who spend decades around military life — moves, deployments, base communities — often become the backbone of organizations like the Auxiliary after their service members come home or pass on. They arrive with the knowledge of what veterans and their families actually need, and with the habit of service already formed.
In Baldwin County, where veteran organizations balance growing membership against the aging of the WWII and Vietnam generations, volunteers like Wheat represent the continuity that keeps posts and programs alive. The bingo nights, themed parties and holiday events she runs are the visible surface of a deeper function: keeping veterans connected to a community that knows their service and counts them as neighbors, not cases.
The state award now sits with a volunteer who, by her family’s account, would rather it sat somewhere else. The veterans she serves likely see it differently — and the national judging round that follows will decide whether Alabama’s Volunteer of the Year becomes a national one.