VBC programs connect and heal,
educate and inspire.
Everyone is always welcome.
educate and inspire.
Everyone is always welcome.
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.
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.
Join us at our events and help keep these stories alive.
All you need to do is listen.
Featured Stories
UPCOMING EVENTS
Join the Veterans Breakfast Club and the Jewish Community Center of Youngstown for a special public luncheon lecture with historian Todd DePastino, telling the fascinating and colorful story of Operation Pastorius, the Nazi plot to sabotage America during World War II. Part thriller, part farce, the story begins in 1942 when eight German saboteurs landed on American shores carrying explosives and big ambitions—but little common sense. Their mission: to cripple U.S. industry and sow terror on the home front. What followed was a tale of betrayal, blunder, and courtroom drama that drew in Franklin D. Roosevelt, J. Edgar Hoover, and the newly empowered FBI.
Todd will bring this stranger-than-fiction episode to life, revealing how wartime fears, propaganda, and luck shaped one of the most bizarre spy cases in American history.
Todd DePastino is founder and executive director of the Veterans Breakfast Club and author of the award-winning Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front and six other books. A dynamic speaker with a Ph.D. in history from Yale, Todd has a gift for making the past come alive with insight, humor, and humanity.
This event is free and open to the public.
You don’t need to be a veteran to attend. Lunch is included.
We’d appreciate your RSVP and a suggested donation of $10 per person.
To RSVP, contact:
JCC Youngstown: 330-746-3250 ext #106 or bwilson@jewishyoungstown.org
Veterans Breakfast Club: 412-623-9029 or JoAnn@veteransbreakfastclub.org
The Veterans Breakfast Club brings American history to life. Join us to listen and learn, connect and heal, and say thank you to those who’ve served.
Thank you to the Youngstown JCC and the Thomases Family Endowment for Supporting this Event!
Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for a moving conversation with author Kevin M. Callahan about his book Brothers in Arms: Remembering Brothers Buried Side by Side in American World War II Cemeteries. Drawing from years of research, hundreds of family interviews, and a personal pilgrimage to American military cemeteries around the world, Callahan tells the powerful and often heartbreaking stories of brothers who fought and died together in World War II.
Brothers in Arms features over 700 historic photographs and original artifacts, collected from the families of the fallen, that put faces and voices to the names carved in white marble. In meticulously maintained cemeteries across Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific—each operated by the American Battle Monuments Commission—visitors occasionally come across two or even three graves with the same last name. These are brothers who served in the same war, often the same unit, and who now rest side by side in foreign soil near the battlefields where they fell.
Callahan’s book chronicles these stories in vivid detail, drawing readers into the lived experiences of American families during the war—sons lost, letters kept, grief endured. From Normandy and Ardennes to Sicily, Manila, and Tunisia, the book traces not only the geography of the war but also the deeply personal cost borne by a generation.
This livestream offers a chance to reflect on duty, family, sacrifice, and remembrance—through stories that span continents and generations. Kevin M. Callahan will share his research, the process of uncovering these personal histories, and what he has learned from visiting each of the 14 overseas World War II cemeteries maintained by the United States.
Learn more about Brothers in Arms and the American Battle Monuments Commission:
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Brothers in Arms book website: https://brothersinarmsbook.com
#VeteransBreakfastClub #BrothersInArms #KevinMCallahan #WWII #MilitaryHistory #GoldStarFamilies #AmericanBattleMonumentsCommission #VBC #WarStories #WWIICemeteries #VeteranVoices #WWIIHistory
We’re grateful to UPMC for Life for sponsoring this event!
PAST EVENTS
GET INVOLVED TODAY
The mission of the Veterans Breakfast Club is to create communities of listening around veterans and their stories to ensure that this living history will never be forgotten. We believe that through our work, people will be connected, educated, healed, and inspired.
INTRODUCING 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!
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