The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in July 1976, when it hosted a statewide convention of the American Legion. Soon after, a pneumonia-like disease killed 29 people and sickened 182 more who had been in the hotel. The vast majority were members of the convention. The negative publicity associated with what became known as "Legionnaires' Disease" caused occupancy at the Bellevue-Stratford to plummet to 4 percent and the hotel finally closed on November 18, 1976. In 1977, Dr. Joseph McDade discovered a new bacterium, which was identified as the causative organism. It thrives in hot, damp places like the water of the cooling towers for the
Polish Legion of American Veterans U.S. military veterans after World War I. Its lineage begins with the Alliance of Polish-American Veterans, created in the summer of 1920 after a gathering of veterans from Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin in Hawthorne, Illinois. In December 1920, this association held a provisional convention and in September 1921 it held its first regular convention, at which they changed their name to the "Alliance of American Veterans of Polish Extraction." In September 1931 the Alliance of American Veterans of Polish Extraction merged with the Polish Legion of the American Army and a veteran's organization from Michigan to form the PLAV. On