At the Veterans Breakfast Club,
Stories Unite Us.
Check out our online & in-person veterans storytelling programs and see our full event schedule below. All are welcome to join us!
Join the Veterans Breakfast Club and the Jewish Community Center of Youngstown for a lunch lecture with historian Todd DePastino about the meaning of the American Revolution and how the Declaration changed America from a world where ordinary people bowed to their “betters” to one founded on the radical idea that “all men are created equal.”
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 special Book Release Edition of VBC Live celebrating the publication of the new, updated edition of Consequences: An Intelligence Officer’s War by former Air Force counterintelligence officer David Grantham.
This event also marks the launch of VBC Books, the Veterans Breakfast Club’s new publishing imprint created in partnership with Blue Ear Books. We couldn’t imagine a more fitting first title.
In 2006, David Grantham entered Iraq as a young counterintelligence officer with the elite Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI). Fresh out of training, he found himself operating in Kuwait, Afghanistan, and eventually at Camp Bucca—the sprawling American detention facility that would later become known as the incubator of ISIS. His mission was not to fight on the front lines, but to gather intelligence, recruit sources, protect American forces, and understand an increasingly chaotic battlefield where every decision carried unforeseen consequences.
Written as narrative nonfiction, Consequences offers a rare, ground-level view of intelligence work during the Iraq War. Rather than focusing on secret gadgets or Hollywood-style espionage, Grantham reveals the patient, uncertain, and deeply human work of earning trust, weighing evidence, and making decisions when lives—and history—hang in the balance. Reviewers have praised the book for opening a window into a world few Americans ever see and for exploring how choices made during wartime can echo for decades.
During this special conversation, David will discuss:
- What counterintelligence officers actually do in wartime
- The hidden intelligence battle behind the Iraq War
- Camp Bucca, Iran’s growing influence, and the rise of ISIS
- The burden of making life-and-death decisions with incomplete information
- Why he decided to tell this story—and what he learned by writing it
We’ll also celebrate the beginning of VBC Books and discuss why preserving veterans’ stories in print remains one of the Veterans Breakfast Club’s most important missions.
Whether you’re interested in military history, intelligence, the Global War on Terror, or simply a remarkable personal story told with honesty and humility, this promises to be an unforgettable evening.
Come help us celebrate the launch of a new book—and a new chapter in the Veterans Breakfast Club’s mission to preserve, publish, and share veterans’ stories.
Pittsburgh Veterans Day Breakfast
Wednesday, November 11, 2026 | 8:00–10:00 AM
Duquesne University Student Union Ballroom | Pittsburgh, PA
Join hundreds of veterans, family members, friends, and members of the community for the 28th Annual Pittsburgh Veterans Day Breakfast, the largest Veterans Day breakfast in Pennsylvania.
For the first time, the Veterans Breakfast Club (VBC) and Veterans Leadership Program (VLP) are joining together to host this great Pittsburgh tradition.
The morning will include breakfast, veterans’ stories, special guests and speakers, fellowship, and a Veterans Resource Fair connecting veterans and their families with organizations and services from across the region.
Veterans, family members, and members of the public are all welcome.
Veterans Day is a day to honor those who served, but this breakfast has always been about more than ceremony. It is about bringing veterans together, hearing their stories, connecting people with one another, and strengthening Pittsburgh’s veterans community.
This year, proceeds from the breakfast will benefit the Veterans Breakfast Club and Veterans Leadership Program, two Pittsburgh organizations dedicated to serving veterans and building stronger communities around them.
Tickets
Tickets have been reduced in price this year to $20 to encourage as many veterans, families, and community members as possible to attend. Register here.
A Pittsburgh Veterans Day Tradition Since 1998
The Pittsburgh Veterans Day Breakfast began on Veterans Day in 1998, when Vietnam veterans Tony Accamando, T.J. McGarvey, Dan Pulz, George D’Angelo and others with the newly formed Friends of Danang gathered supporters at the Pittsburgh Marriott City Center. Their immediate purpose was charitable: Friends of Danang was raising money for humanitarian work in Vietnam, including projects benefiting children, schools, and communities in and around Danang.
That first breakfast started an annual tradition that grew into the largest Veterans Day events in Pennsylvania. Over the years, thousands have come to the event not simply for breakfast, but for camaraderie, recognition, and a chance to support good work in the veterans community.
The breakfast also became increasingly collaborative. Friends of Danang generously opened the event to other organizations and causes, including the Veterans Leadership Program, Shepherd’s Heart Veterans Home, the Duquesne University veterans scholarship program, World Vision International, and later Life Changing Service Dogs for Veterans.
The Veterans Breakfast Club has been part of this tradition for the past 15 years. In 2011, the VBC started holding a WWII veterans’ storytelling event at the breakfast. VBC Executive Director Todd DePastino has served as the event emcee for the past several years.
This year, for the first time, the Veterans Breakfast Club and Veterans Leadership Program are partnering to host the Pittsburgh Veterans Day Breakfast, with proceeds benefiting both organizations.
We are grateful to Tony Accamando and Friends of Danang for creating this remarkable Pittsburgh institution and for sharing it so generously over the years. VBC and VLP are proud to carry it forward.
Our goal is simple: keep the tradition, broaden the community, and make Veterans Day a morning when veterans from every generation can come together to share stories, find resources, connect with community and celebrate their service.
More Than a Breakfast: Veterans Resource Fair
We also want the 2026 Pittsburgh Veterans Day Breakfast to be a place where veterans can find useful information and make connections.
Organizations serving veterans and military families will be invited to participate in a Veterans Resource Fair at Duquesne University. Veterans will be able to meet representatives from organizations working in areas such as health care, benefits, employment, housing, education, legal assistance, family services, recreation, and other veteran programs.
VBC has hosted similar large veterans resource gatherings in the past, and we want to bring that same spirit to Veterans Day: one room, hundreds of veterans, and many of the organizations that serve them gathered in one place.
Parking
Convenient parking is available at the Forbes Avenue Garage, directly across from the Student Union.
Forbes Avenue Garage
1180 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15219 (click for directions)
Sponsorship Opportunities
2026 Pittsburgh Veterans Day Breakfast Sponsorships
Questions? betty@veteransbreakfastclub.org or call 412-623-9029.
We talk with members of USAF Pilot Training Class 62A, whose careers would take them from the Cold War into Vietnam and some of the most consequential events in modern Air Force history.
They arrived at pilot training from remarkably different backgrounds and left with assignments that would scatter them around the world. Over the decades that followed, members of 62A would fly nearly every kind of Air Force mission imaginable—and experience moments of extraordinary courage, tragedy, ingenuity, and sheer luck.
Some of their most remarkable stories have rarely been told.
More than six decades later, the friendships forged in pilot training have endured. The class, originating from five different bases, continued gathering for reunions all over the U.S. every two years for the last 20 years, preserving the memories of classmates who have taken their final flight and maintaining a bond that began in 1960.
On November 16th, members of Class 62A join the Veterans Breakfast Club to take us inside Air Force pilot training at the beginning of the jet age—and tell us where those silver wings ultimately took them.
One of the oldest surviving U.S. Army buildings in America is the Hessian Powder Magazine in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. This sturdy limestone structure was built during the darkest days of the American Revolution to store the gunpowder and ammunition that helped sustain George Washington’s army. But who built it? And why has it long been known as the “Hessian” Powder Magazine?
Join us for a special America 250 program featuring a screening of the new 40-minute documentary The Hessian Powder Magazine, followed by a live conversation with historian Jack Leighow of the U.S. Army Heritage & Education Center and Army University, who helped lead the years-long research behind the film.
Drawing on newly uncovered documents, architectural analysis, ground-penetrating radar, and archaeological excavations, the documentary follows the remarkable effort to solve a centuries-old historical puzzle. The investigation confirms that the building is indeed the Revolutionary War powder magazine constructed in 1777 as part of the sprawling military depot at Carlisle, one of the Continental Army’s most important centers for manufacturing weapons, ammunition, and military supplies. It also reveals compelling evidence that Hessian prisoners captured at Trenton likely helped build the magazine, giving new meaning to a name that had long been dismissed as little more than local legend.
The story illuminates the enormous logistical effort behind American independence, the workshops, foundries, carpenters, blacksmiths, laborers, and military planners who supplied Washington’s army when victory depended as much on production as battlefield success. It also reminds us that history is never finished. Even after 250 years, archaeology, archival research, and careful scholarship continue to reshape what we know about the Revolution.
Following the film, Jack Leighow will discuss the investigation, answer questions, and explain how this remarkable survivor of the Revolutionary War is helping us better understand the nation’s founding as America approaches its 250th anniversary.
When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, Americans mourned a fallen leader. But behind the scenes, the U.S. military launched a worldwide response that remains little known today.
Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for a conversation with researcher and former Marine officer John F. Davies, whose years of work in newly released government records and veterans’ accounts examines how the armed forces reacted during the tense hours and days following the assassination. Davies argues that military commands around the world were placed on heightened alert and that concerns about Soviet involvement created fears of a much wider international crisis.
We’ll explore what happened inside the Pentagon and overseas commands, hear from veterans who were serving at the time, and discuss how one of the most shocking events in American history intersected with the dangers of the Cold War.
This event is free and open to all. To join the conversation live on Zoom, please use this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6402618738.
Or tune in on Facebook or YouTube at 7:00pm ET. Whether you have something to share or simply want to listen and learn, we welcome you to be part of the conversation!
