LISBON — Plaques, pictures and mementos of four decades of dances, suppers and service to local veterans are being boxed up and stored away.

Four months after it closed its doors due to lack of money, the 47-year-old Raymond J. Lavigne Post 9459 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars is selling its hall on Route 196 in Lisbon.

“It wasn’t something we wanted,” William Thomas, the post’s commander, said. “We just couldn’t stay open because we couldn’t afford it.”

The post has signed a sale contract with a buyer who plans to turn the hall into a club, Chad Sylvester, a real estate broker with the Fontaine Family agency, said.

Meanwhile, the post will go on, promised Thomas.

For now, the group meets every third Saturday of the month at Lisbon’s Marion T. Morse School building.

One day, they hope to have another permanent home.

“It’s going to be in the future,” Thomas said. “Maybe.”

The post has been declining since the mid-1990s.

In 1982, when Thomas joined, the place was a town hub. It filled on Saturday nights. There were dances, suppers and wedding receptions.

By the mid-1990s, the memberships slowed. Many members died. By fall 2012, when the post put the hall on the market, they had a roster of 500 members, but only about 15 people were active.

They put the hall on the market, hoping the desperate move would ignite support. Instead, in January, they closed the doors for good.

“For the last five years, we’ve been on the verge of closing the doors,” Thomas said. The post hoped to raise $90,000 with the sale. The current deal, which closes this summer, settled on a price of about $85,000.

The money could be used to help the post find a new meeting space.

But for now, Thomas and the others are mourning.

His wife, Carole, helped pack up some of their mementos on Wednesday. She has served in the post’s auxiliary since 1979.

“There were lots of tears,” she said.

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