Local Navy League chapter relaunches with first meeting

Originally published on September 25, 2025

By TERRY DICKSON terryldickson50@gmail.com

After years of dormancy, the Golden Isles Council of the Navy League relaunched Tuesday with its inaugural meeting.

The council met at American Legion Post 166’s hall on Gascoigne Bluff. Post 166 hosts other organizations and rents out the facility for some events.

Glenn Cook, a former Navy and airlines pilot, handled the onerous administrative tasks of making the council legal again and will serve as its president.

The council is off to an encouraging restart, although the numbers are by no means firm. Cook said the council has at least 30 members, and he is hopeful the number will ultimately be around 45 and continue to grow.

At least 18 signed up Wednesday night as board member Stephanie Treece told the audience that by joining that night they would be recognized as charter members.

“You can say I was there in the beginning,’’ she said.

Letting things go dormant and starting over was the theme of the keynote speaker, retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Robert Magnus, who served 38 years in the corps, including as the 30th assistant commandant.

He began with a detailed account of an April 18, 1778, Georgia State Navy victory when the crews of three heavily armed galleys took three British warships that ran aground in the Frederica River. Led by Col. Samuel Elbert, the galleys could maneuver around the becalmed British ships and their cannons had longer range than the smaller bore guns on the Royal Navy ships, Magnus said.

In 1785, after the colonies gained their independence, the Navy was disbanded. Congress reauthorized it four years later and new construction was authorized in 1794, Magnus said.

“I would like to say we had learned our lesson about demobilizing after a bitter but successful war, but that would be untrue,’’ he said.

During the American Civil War, the Navy increased to 700 ships, including 60 ironclads, but by 1881, the fleet was reduced to 140 vessels, only 52 of which were operational, Magnus said.

The national interest spread across the Atlantic and Pacific and by the end of World War I, the U.S. had built the world’s largest navy. During World War II, the Navy had more than 1,200 active ships.

“America repeatedly has had to rapidly rebuild a navy, recruit and train sailors and Marines. Yet after every war ended, we slashed the capabilities and costs of our ships only to rebuild …without any idea when, where, against, or how quickly we might need to respond,’’ he said.

Today, the Navy has fewer than 300 ships, less if only the warships and submarines are counted and even fewer with the subtraction of those in extended “maintenance availabilities,’ Magnus said.

The Navy League acts as an advocate for the Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine, as well as the service men and women and their families.

“We Navy Leaguers owe it to our brave predecessors and to the future generations of free Americans not to continue this path of weakness at sea as other powers have grown large modern navies,” he said.

It is necessary to understand the country’s “maritime needs to maintain them now and ensure that sea power will be ready for future generations,’’ Magnus said.

He also noted it takes longer to build a fighting force than it once did.

“Warships take years to construct. Trained crews take years to recruit and make ready. Battle-worthy leaders take decades to season,’’ Magnus said.

“We have too few ships with too many unavailable for peacetime deployments and crisis response, Magnus said.

As citizens and members of the Navy League, “we must ensure that the members of Congress know that more, not less, is required for the freedom of the seas so vital to our economy, our defenses, support for our allies, and to our sovereignty and liberties that future generations will enjoy,’’ he said.

The crowd, which filled every available seat, including some extras, in the Legion hall responded enthusiastically. They also were enthusiastic over the resumption of Golden Isles Council.

Dave Reilly, a Navy retiree who formerly commanded the Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic at Kings Bay, was one of those who wanted to see the Golden isles Council re-activated.

After its formation in 1986, the Golden isles Council had been very active until it slowly faded away and stopped meeting, said Reilly, who served as the 51st national president of the U.S. Navy League and also as president of the state Navy League and the South Atlantic Coast Region.

Although dormant, the Golden Isles Council was never legally dissolved, he said.

Perhaps it wasn’t dissolved, but it was the legal issues that presented the biggest hurdles, Cook said, because it was “absolutely dissolved” in the eyes of the state.

The hardest parts were the complicated processes of securing the council’s standing with the state and the establishment of its tax exempt status, Cook said.

Tuesday’s meeting was a launch with no official business. That will come Oct. 28 when the Golden Isles Council will hold its first business meeting to vote on board members and elect officers. It is operating now with Cook and a six-member board.

Retired Marine Corps Gen. Robert Magnus spoke Tuesday night at the inaugural meeting of the resurrected Golden Isles Council of the Navy league.