At the Veterans Breakfast Club,
Stories Unite Us.
Check out our upcoming in-person veterans storytelling event schedule below. All are welcome to join us!
Sponsors
The VBC and the Pittsburgh’s Heinz History Center are holding a special Vietnam Veterans Day 50th Anniversary Event on March 29, 6:00pm to 8:00pm.
The event will be held in-person at the Heinz History Center and will also be available online on Facebook and YouTube
This free Vietnam Veterans Day event will honor and recognize all veterans who served on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces at any time during the period of November 1, 1955, to May 15, 1975, regardless of duty location.
Non-Veterans are especially welcome to attend and pay tribute to our Vietnam Veterans, hear their stories of service, and thank them for blazing the trail for every serviceman and woman who came after them.
The event will feature refreshments, a social hour, and then a program with special guests, stories, and a pinning ceremony.
Every Vietnam Veteran registered for this event will receive a gift bag as a token of our gratitude for your service.
For those who will be joining us virtually, the gift bag will be shipped to the home address provided.
Register for the event here Register for the event here .
Sponsorship Opportunities Available
We have a range of sponsorships available with speaking opportunities, social media logo placement, and vendor tables and signs. If you have ideas for sponsoring not covered in the information below, let us know.
Welcome Home Gift Bag
Now is your chance to say thank you to a Vietnam Veteran who did not get welcomed home 50 years ago.
Every Vietnam Veteran who attends online or in-person will receive a Welcome Home Gift Bag, either in person or in the mail.
Please consider sponsoring a Welcome Home Box for a Vietnam Veteran for $20. We can include a custom thank you note from you to the veteran.
Just click the button below and add a note that your donation is for a Vietnam Veteran Gift Bag.
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 Sponsors Encompass Health and St. Barnabas Health System
- General Admission: $10 (in-person)
- History Center members: $5 (in-person)
- Veterans Breakfast Club members: $5 (in-person)
Livestream is free.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, college football was at the height of its popularity. As the nation geared up for war, one branch of the service dominated the aspirations of college football stars: the United States Marine Corps.
Which is why, on Christmas Eve of 1944, when the 4th and 29th Marine regiments found themselves in the middle of the Pacific Ocean training for what would be the bloodiest battle of the war – the invasion of Okinawa—their ranks included one of the greatest pools of football talent ever assembled: Former All Americans, captains from Wisconsin and Brown and Notre Dame, and nearly twenty men who were either drafted or would ultimately play in the NFL.
When the arguments between the 4th and 29th over who had the better football team reached a fever pitch, it was decided: The two regiments would play each other in a football game as close to the real thing as you could get in the dirt and coral of Guadalcanal on Christmas Eve, 1944. The bruising and bloody game that followed became known as “The Mosquito Bowl.”
Within a matter of months, fifteen of the 64 the players in “The Mosquito Bowl” would be killed at Okinawa, by far the largest number of American athletes ever to die in a single battle. The Mosquito Bowl is the story of these brave young men, those who survived and those who did not. It is the story of the families and the landscape that shaped them. It is a story of a far more innocent time in both college athletics and the life of the country. And of the loss of that innocence.
Writing with the style and rigor that won him a Pulitzer Prize and have made his books modern classics, Buzz Bissinger takes us from the playing fields of America’s campuses where boys played at being Marines, to the final time they were allowed to still be boys on that field of dirt and coral, to the darkest and deadliest days that followed at Okinawa.
Our first Penn Hills breakfast was back in 2009, and it’s been a lively location ever since with an unusual number of World War II veterans still attending regularly. Take 99-year-old Mike Scuro, above left, for example. The WWII veteran leads us in the National Anthem every event and always offer a little war story, such as the one about going AWOL during Basic Training to sneak back home for his mother’s cooking. Or Dominick Carchidi, above right, who joined the Navy at age 16 and become a Navy Diver on submarine rescue in the North Atlantic aboard the USS Falcon (ASR-2) and USS Penguin (ASR-12). Dominic has told stories of his dives and rescues and also of the first thing he did after the war, which was to buy a Model A Ford for $80 and drive it cross country to California at 25 mph.
Join us in Penn Hills and perhaps meet Mike and Dominick at our next event there on April 14 at 10:00am.
It’s a new location and also a new format. This will be our first event atBeulah Presbyterian Church (2500 McCrady Rd, Pittsburgh, PA 15235) right off the Parkway in Churchill.
Instead of an early breakfast, we’re doing light refreshments–coffee and Danish–at no charge. The event begins at 10:00am with food service and socializing, and then we’ll start our program at 10:30am and continue the storytelling to 12:00pm noon.
As always, everyone is welcome, and you don’t need to be a veteran to attend.
RSVP by calling 412-623-9029 or emailing betty@veteransbreakfastclub.org. And let us know if you have any questions!
Please consider sponsoring this event!
Veterans Breakfast Club Announces First Event in New Castle Sponsored by The New Castle Rotary Club
Veterans Breakfast Club (VBC) will hold its first in-person veterans storytelling breakfast in New Castle on Saturday, April 22, 2023 from 9am-11am. The event will be held at The Villa Banquet Center Medure’s Catering 2500 New Butler Road, New Castle, PA 16101. The event is sponsored by the New Castle Rotary Club and is free of charge and open to the general public.
The event will provide veterans and members of the public the opportunity to listen and share their one-of-a-kind stories, while engaging with other local veterans. There is no cost to attend.
Since 2008, VBC has served the local veteran community in the greater Pittsburgh area, hosting weekly local gatherings for veterans. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, VBC transitioned to virtual programming and announced a national expansion of the organization, opening its programs to veterans around the country and world.
“Our community grew so much during the pandemic, providing a space for more veterans from around the country and world to share their stories and connect with each other,” said Todd DePastino, founder and executive director of VBC. “While we will continue to host virtual programs, we are also thrilled to return to in-person events here in Western Pennsylvania. All veterans have a story to share, and we are honored to offer a platform for our veterans to connect, heal and inspire each other.”
In addition to hosting two in-person events per month, VBC also holds a weekly program online, VBC Happy Hour, and publishes the quarterly VBC Magazine, the weekly VBC Bulletin e-newsletter, and a weekly podcast on military culture, The Scuttlebutt.
RSVPs are required. Please make your reservation by emailing VBC Administrator Betty Karleski at betty@veteransbreakfastclub.org.
About Veterans Breakfast Club
Founded in 2008, Veterans Breakfast Club is a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to creating communities of listening around veterans and their stories to ensure that this living history will never be forgotten. VBC believes that through their work, people will be connected, educated, healed and inspired. Through weekly virtual programming, VBC offers a one-of-a-kind community that brings together veterans, their families and civilians to share, celebrate and preserve veterans’ stories. To learn more and join our community, visit veteransbreakfastclub.org.
