UPCOMING EVENTS

“Brothers Like These”: Veterans Who Write . . . and Heal – Monday, April 3 @ 7pm ET

Date: April 3, 2023
Time: 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Location: Zoom, YouTube, Facebook
All Events | Online Events | VBC Happy Hour

 

This photo, titled “Coming into Country,” is of American soldiers in Vietnam. Photo courtesy of Troy “Butch” Gudger, one of the Brothers.

Join us for a conversation with veterans who’ve written their stories in poetry and prose, and the Creative Writing Professor and Medical Doctor who co-founded the Creative Writing Program at the Charles George VA Medical Center in Asheville, North Carolina.

In spring of 2014, Joseph Bathanti, Creative Writing Professor at Appalachian State University and then North Carolina Poet Laureate and Dr. Bruce Kelly, a primary care physician at Charles George, began conversations about launching a creative program for Vietnam Veterans in Kelly’s care who were struggling with PTSD.

Kelly had been pioneering Medical Humanities at the VA, as well as a community-based Arts in Medicine program – programs that transformed what healing looks like for wounded veterans. Bathanti, in his two-year signature project as poet laureate had worked with returning combat veterans and their families to harvest their war-time stories through various strands of creative writing.

After months of strategizing and wrangling with red tape, Bathanti and Kelly began meeting with cohorts of Vietnam Veterans in Classroom B, an out of the way room in the basement of the Asheville VA, where they gathered weekly to write. In January of 2016 –through the generosity of the NC Arts Council, the NC Humanities Council, the cooperation of Appalachian State University, and Kelly’s unflagging determination – Bathanti assumed the role of Charles George VA Medical Center Writer-in-Residence.

Those weekly sessions yielded extraordinary, breathtaking writing. In Classroom B those Vietnam Veterans – none of whom would have ever called themselves writers, but boy could they write – committed to paper stories that had been banging around inside of them, often deviling them, since their service in Vietnam – the same stories that empowered and lifted them, and for which they discovered language and voices. Each time one of the men read his story aloud to the others, there were nods of recognition.

Those men gave one another the strength and permission to tell their stories – and it’s crucial to mention that these men had not known one another before crossing the risky threshold into Classroom B. Nevertheless, they had been brothers, of course, long before they had ever met. They understood one another perfectly and understood as well their respective stories of the war they had each kept secret for fifty years – and then those stories came out, first in trickles, then in torrents, and it hasn’t stopped, nor will it.

Brothers Like These, a staged reading of those Vietnam Veterans reading the work they produced in Classroom B, premiered on August 31, 2016 at the Asheville Community Theater, and was later reprised at Appalachian State University on April 19, 2017. It’s been performed in Franklin, NC, Old Fort, NC, at the Vietnam Veterans of America annual mid-Atlantic Convention in Durham, NC, and was excerpted at the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival in Burnsville, NC in September of 2019 and at the North Carolina Writers Network Annual Conference in Asheville, also in 2019. What’s more, it continues to be performed in venues across the state.

Brothers Like These weaves the remarkable voices of unimaginably brave soldiers who gave their all during the Vietnam War. These are stories and poems, large and small, funny and heartbreaking — not just invaluable to succeeding generations of soldiers, but to every citizen of our country, and beyond. In April of 2017, the book, Brothers Like These, was published by St. Andrews University Press, and remains the Press’s best-seller.

A number of the original group of men from Bathanti’s and Kelly’s workshops have since launched the foundation, North Carolina Veterans Writing Alliance, also known as Brothers and Sisters Like These (https://brothersandsisterslikethese.com/shop), which includes women veterans, and veterans of all stripe, from all wars . They are now going forth like evangelists to continue the work of harvesting veterans’ stories.

Sponsored by D&D Auto Salvage and Tobacco Free Adagio Health.  Simulcast to Facebook and YouTube.

Veterans Breakfast Club – Seven Oaks Country Club | April 5, 2023

Date: April 5, 2023
Time: 8:30 am - 10:30 am
Location: Seven Oaks Country Club (132 Lisbon Rd, Beaver, 15009)
All Events | In-Person Events
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Come to our live, in-person breakfast in Beaver, PA, and hear some stories from four generations of veterans.

Above, you see Brandy Horchak and Vitalijs Jevsjukova. They met in Iraq in 2003 and fell in love. Brandy served in the Air Force as a heavy weapons gunner in USAF Security Forces. “V,” as everyone calls him, was a gunner in the Latvian Army serving with coalition forces. They shared their stories at our Beaver events and also talked about their work at Warriors’ Call Boxing, a gym that focuses on the physical and psychological well-being of veterans and others who join.

Join us to meet people like Brandy, V, and others who served from WWII to the present day.

We meet at Seven Oaks Country Club (132 Lisbon Rd, Beaver, 15009). You’ll walk in, pick up your name badge, pay $15 if you plan to eat (no cost for those who don’t), and meet others who are there to hear and share the stories. Breakfast is served at 8:30am. At 9:00am, we start the program. For the next 90 minutes, we circulate the room with the microphone and have veterans share a slice of their service experience. You never know what you’re going to hear, and there’s always new people with new memories to offer.

RSVP by calling 412-623-9029 or emailing betty@veteransbreakfastclub.org. Please make sure to RSVP for events at least two days in advance. We understand that your schedule can change quickly, but advance notice of attendance always helps us and our venues prepare the program. Thank you!

Thank you to our Event Sponsor St. Barnabas Health System

 

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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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