Today it has 150 widows, still mainly from the Second World War, but no children of soldiers who have died in conflicts.

Legacy Orange has just celebrated its 70^th anniversary with an anniversary luncheon at the Orange Ex-Service’s Club.

President Rob Blake said the group continued to be active in the community helping war widows.

He said being a widow could be a lonely life and they wanted to provide outings and meetings plus help including home repairs and lawn mowing to help them out.

“We spend about $4000 a month in summer mowing lawns,” he said.

Mr Blake said the number of legatees, people willing to offer care for widows and mentoring for children of soldiers who die fighting for Australia, was increasing in Orange and they were looking for more people to help.

“In Orange I think it’s 26 now,” he said.

“We went up by another five this year.”

He said they were looking for Army reservists, police officers, business leaders and others to take on the roles.

“The character of the legatee has to be without impunity, it has to be first class,” he said.

“We are pretty disciplined in the things we do. We expect that when we ask someone to do something they will do it and they will do it well.”

Mr Blake said most of the families Legacy looked after in Orange had lost soldiers in the Second World War, the Korean War and the Malayan conflict.

He said the body was able to help people affected by more recent conflicts but currently none of them had been in contact.

Mr Blake said Legacy was formed in the 1920s as a way of supporting widows of soldiers from World War I.

“You’ve got a soldier dying in the trenches and inevitably the last thing they said was ‘look after my missus and children,” he said.

Guest speaker at the anniversary luncheon was Australian Defence Force RSM Jamie Osborne.

“He brought along the personal protection armour they wear [now]. It weighs 48-58 kilograms per person,” Mr Blake said.