On September 15, 1932, the 14th National Convention of the American Legion authorized the organization of the Alonzo Cudworth Squadron Number 23, Sons of the American Legion, Milwaukee. The squadron served as an adjunct to its parent organization, Alonzo Cudworth Post Number 23 of the American Legion, which had been founded in 1919. The new squadron--largest in Wisconsin--held its first meeting on March 3, 1934. All male descendants of American Legion post members were eligible for membership in the organization, and squadron activities were supervised by a committee chosen by the post commander. The squadron was essentially a social and citizenship organization, similar to the Boy Scouts. Members participated in athletics, performed community services, held fund-raising events, heard speeches, and studied American history. The guiding principles of the organization, as represented by its five-pointed star, were patriotism, citizenship, discipline, leadership, and “legionism.”
Attached to the squadron was its Drum Corps, founded in 1935. The sixty-five person corps soon became one of the best of its kind in the nation, and the group won awards at state and national conventions of the American Legion. The Drum Corps sponsored numerous fund-raising events, practiced on a rigorous schedule, and performed often.
The first chairman of both the Drum Corps and the squadron was Joseph Hrdlick. He held many posts in local and state organizations of the Sons of the American Legion, and it was he who kept the records of the Cudworth squadron in Milwaukee. In 1937 administrative work for the squadron and the Drum Corps was divided between two committees, both chaired by Hrdlick. Separate constitutions and bylaws were drawn up for both organizations in 1938. A dispute over administrative control of the Drum Corps developed in 1939: revolving around an amendment which Hrdlick proposed for the post bylaws, the controversy had to be resolved at the state and national levels of the American Legion.
With the United States' entry into World War II, membership in the squadron and Drum Corps diminished substantially.
