By Todd DePastino Somewhere out there are 35 Marines who enlisted together on a summer evening at the old Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minnesota, almost sixty years ago. Some of them may be gone, but their sons, daughters, grandchildren, neighbors, or old friends would know what became of them. Either way, author and Marine
By Todd DePastino One of the pleasures of running the Veterans Breakfast Club is discovering other people like us who have spent years building communities around veterans and their stories. Earlier this year, VBC friend and Vietnam Donut Dolly Ginny Close reached out to tell us about Vietnam veteran Keith Goudy and the remarkable
By Todd DePastino The Veterans Breakfast Club mourns the passing of Diane Carlson Evans, Army nurse, Vietnam veteran, and tireless advocate for women veterans. Diane passed away on May 20, 2026, in Helena, Montana, after a long battle with cancer at the age of 79. It's because of Diane Carlson Evans that we have
By Todd DePastino I've known for three years that VBC Magazine's Managing Editor Daria Sommers was a talented storyteller, gifted writer, and deeply insightful about the human experience of war. But I had no idea she was about to surprise the world with a literary novel that would catch fire with readers around the
Courtesy VVA Veteran (https://vvaveteran.org/32-5/felton.html) By Todd DePastino A few days ago, I received an email from Suzanne Sigona, who has been a volunteer at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, The Wall, in Washington, DC, for over 30 years. She wanted me to know about the recent death of Duery Felton Jr., the longtime
By Will Mears Two recent Veterans Breakfast Club programs have featured veterans of the Army Security Agency (ASA) whose work was important and behind-the-scenes. Their job was, among other things, to intercept, decode, and interpret enemy communications in real time. It was painstaking, highly technical work, carried out under strict secrecy. And yet, as
