The Veterans Breakfast Club (VBC) is the nation’s premier non-profit for connecting veterans with their fellow Americans through inspiring stories of service. We’re the place where veterans can share what they’ve seen and done—and where everyone can listen and learn.
UPCOMING EVENTS
In August 1969, nearly half a million Americans gathered at a farm in Upstate New York for what would become a defining moment of a generation: the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival. But Woodstock wasn’t really about music. In large part, it was about war. And the soundtrack it produced revealed the nation’s fault lines of protest, patriotism, grief, and defiance.
Join the Veterans Breakfast Club as we return to one of our most popular conversations: the music of the Vietnam War era. This time, we mark the 57th anniversary of Woodstock and add some new voices.
We’ll be joined by longtime VBC favorites Doug Bradley, Donn Nemchick, and Shaun Hall, along with two special guests who bring fresh perspective:
- Ron Farina, a U.S. Marine who lived the war these songs were trying to make sense of
- Mary Ellen Junda, a nationally recognized music historian, conductor, and educator whose work explores how song expresses social consciousness and binds communities together
Dr. Junda’s scholarship focuses on how music helps us process social change and conflict. She studies folk traditions and how music shapes as much as it represents the age.
We’ll talk about what troops in Vietnam actually listened to and what they knew about the changing music scene back home. We’ll also talk about Woodstock and what it meant.
Is China already a great power—or still becoming one? And if it is, what does that mean for the United States, the Navy, and the balance of power at sea?
Dr. Bernard “Bud” Cole is a 30-year U.S. Navy veteran, former warship commander, and one of America’s leading experts on China’s military and maritime strategy.
Bud Cole has spent a lifetime in the Pacific—at sea, in uniform, and in the classroom—studying the very questions now dominating headlines:
- Captain, U.S. Navy (Ret.) – Surface Warfare Officer with 30 years of service
- Commanded USS Rathburne (FF-1057) and a destroyer squadron
- Served in Vietnam as a naval gunfire liaison officer with Marines
- Former Professor of International History, National War College
- Author of landmark works on China and naval power, including The Great Wall at Sea
He has watched China’s rise not from afar, but up close—over decades—as its navy evolved into a global force challenging U.S. influence across the Indo-Pacific.
- What “great power” actually means—and whether China meets the test
- The rapid expansion of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)
- Why the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait matter so much
- How maritime power shapes global trade, energy, and security
- Where U.S.–China competition is heading—and what could go wrong
- Lessons from history about rising powers and established ones
This is not a cable news argument or a policy lecture. It’s a conversation with someone who has served, commanded, studied, and taught the realities of naval power and great-power competition.
About VBC LIVE:
The Veterans Breakfast Club brings veterans, families, and the public together in communities of listening—where stories, experience, and history help us better understand today’s world.
#China #USNavy #IndoPacific #Taiwan #SouthChinaSea #Geopolitics #MilitaryHistory #NavalStrategy #Veterans #GreatPower #VBC
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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.
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!
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.
