The Veterans Breakfast Club (VBC) is the nation’s premier non-profit for connecting veterans with their fellow Americans through inspiring stories of service. We’re the place where veterans can share what they’ve seen and done—and where everyone can listen and learn.
UPCOMING EVENTS
We welcome Army intelligence veteran Bethany Redmond to share her story. She didn’t grow up aiming for the military. She was a language and humanities student from Los Alamos, New Mexico — not the stereotypical path into national security — until an Army recruiter’s call at the end of high school nudged her into service. From there she found herself in Army intelligence, where listening, pattern recognition, and human judgment mattered more than guns or glory.
After her military service, Bethany continued on a path that few Americans ever see up close: counterintelligence. She worked protecting critical research and personnel at Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of the nation’s premier science and national security institutions. Today she is a leader in protective intelligence, helping organizations understand how ordinary activities — travel, publication histories, personnel movements — can create vulnerabilities exploited by foreign actors and insider threats.
In this Veterans Breakfast Club conversation we’ll explore the real work behind national security “behind the scenes,” what counterintelligence looks like in the 21st century, and how the habits veterans learn in uniform translate to protecting the nation in new arenas.
Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for an evening of stories, burgers, and craft beer at a former Cold War missile command bunker—now Grist House Command Brewery. Hear firsthand accounts from Nike missile veterans who once stood guard over Pittsburgh during the tensest years of the Cold War.
DATE: Tuesday, March 10 at 5pm
LOCATION: 301 Sgt Messerschmidt Rd, Oakdale, PA 15071
COST: $20 per person ($25 at the door) and includes one beer and one burger/hot dog with fries.
REGISTER: Please register for this event here: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/ev/reg/b4uq4s9/lp/bd55f95b-7496-4faf-bc28-4b5fe9103a0b
We’re having a special event at one of Pittsburgh’s most unusual venues: Grist House Command, a former U.S. Army Nike missile command site turned a veteran-managed craft brewery.
During the Cold War, Pittsburgh was ringed by Nike missile batteries designed to defend the city’s steel mills, bridges, and population from a Soviet bomber attack. The command facility that now houses Grist House Command once coordinated radar, tracking, and missile launches for this regional air defense network—part of a nationwide system that stood guard from the early 1950s through the 1970s.
Today, the blast doors and concrete bunkers remain, repurposed as a taproom with much of the history on display in signs, artifacts, and photos. You can learn more about the site’s transformation here:
We’ll have former Army “missileers” join us to share their stories, including George Millerschoen, a veteran Nike missile crewman who served at Cold War missile sites in the Pittsburgh region. George will share what it was like to stand nuclear and conventional missile watch in total secrecy during one of the most anxious periods in American history. (Read more about his story here: https://www.pittsburghmagazine.com/tour-a-former-cold-war-missile-site-in-moon/)
Other veterans who served at Nike sites and in Cold War air defense will be invited to share their memories of service.
The Veterans Breakfast Club has been bringing veterans and civilians together for face-to-face storytelling since 2008. Our events are informal, welcoming, and open to all. People come to listen and learn, connect across generations, and say thank you to those who served.
Thank you to Rohrich for sponsoring!
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The Veterans Breakfast Club (VBC) is the nation’s premier non-profit for connecting veterans with their fellow Americans through inspiring stories of service.
Our goal is to build a nation that understands and values the experiences of our military veterans so that every day is Veterans Day.
We do this by bringing together–in-person and online–men and women from all walks of life, all ages and eras, and every branch of service to talk about what they’ve seen and done. We want to hear how people’s military service has shaped them. “Every Veteran Has a Story” is our slogan. We want to hear every one.
We share the stories we hear in our weekly VBC Bulletin email newsletter and our quarterly VBC Magazine. We also record a weekly podcast, The Scuttlebutt, about military culture from the people who lived it.
We do all this because we believe the best way to thank a Veteran is to listen.
Listening is what the VBC has been doing for the past 15 years, when we held our first small event outside of Pittsburgh. Since then, we’ve held over 1,000 programs in-person and online and have welcomed over 20,000 different people at our events, Veterans and non-Veterans coming together to listen.
We value every veteran’s experience, no matter who they are or when or how they served. We’ve seen up close the power of storytelling, as the memories shared at VBC events connect, heal, educate, and inspire an ever-expanding circle of listeners.
THE VETERANS HISTORY PROJECT
Preserving veterans’ stories so that this living history is never forgotten.
We pair passionate VBC volunteers with military veterans for one-on-one oral history interviews over Zoom. If you are a veteran, or you know a veteran, who would be interested in sharing his or her story with us, let us know. If you are someone interested in conducting these interviews, please reach out!
At any given event, you might hear from the newest members of Space Force to a 101-year-old World War II veteran.
We’ve welcomed Tin Can Sailors and Montford Point Marines, Vietnam Sky Soldiers and Cold War intelligence officers. We’ve heard stories from the Horn of Africa to Antarctica, the Bering Sea to Diego Garcia, and all points in between.
LORAN Coast Guardsmen and Radar Station Airmen have told us about serving in some of the most remote places on earth.
Korean War veterans have borne witness to their “forgotten war.”
Other “forgotten warriors” shared their memories of Beirut, Grenada, and Mogadishu.
Some of the first women authorized for combat shared stories of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of the Purple Hearts they received.
