Spend Veterans Day with some Veterans for Peace

Veterans Reflect on Memorial Day:

Veterans for Peace will Offer an Alternative Commemoration in Poetry, Prose and Song

7 p.m. Monday, May 28, at The Regulator  

 

In what they call an alternative to the usual “glorification and glamorization” of war often accompanying Memorial Day celebrations, the Eisenhower Chapter of Veterans for Peace (VFP) will offer an evening of reflection in poetry, prose, and song by its members. The event is scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday, May 28, at the Regulator Bookshop (720 9^th St., Durham) and is free and open to the public.

Five local U.S. veterans of four different wars, from WWII to the present, will read from their published works.

~ Joseph Eger of Durham, 91, who served as a sergeant in the US Air Forces in WW II, will read from EINSTEIN'S VIOLIN: A Conductor's Notes on Music and Social Change. Once hailed as “the greatest horn player alive” by the New York Times, Eger was principal soloist for the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles and National Symphony Orchestras before re-emerging as a world-renowned symphony conductor and social activist.

~ Barry L. Reece of Pittsboro, 77, who served in both the U.S. Army and the National Guard, is a Korean War veteran and poet. The author or co-author of more than 40 textbooks on interpersonal relations, leadership and communications, Reece is Professor Emeritus at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State College, and will read from his second work of collected poems: Lingering Memories – Second Act: New and Selected Poems.

~ Logan Mehl-Laituri of Durham, 30, is a candidate for a Master’s Degree in Theological Studies at Duke Divinity School. A veteran of the War on Iraq, he served in the U.S. Army (Sgt.E5) from Aug. 2000 to Nov. 2006. His book, titled Reborn on the Fourth of July: The Challenge of Faith, Patriotism, & Conscience, will be published this July.

~ Three-tour Iraq War veteran Russell Snyder of Raleigh, 30, will offer excerpts from his book, Hearts and Mines: With the Marines in Al Anbar: A Story of Psychological Warfare in Iraq, published earlier this year. Recently returned from Iraq, where he served as an Army Psychological Operations specialist from 2002 to 2011, Snyder is currently a student at NC State University, pursuing a degree in International Studies with a concentration in International Relations.

~ Also taking part in VFP’s Memorial Day Program will be John Heuer, president of the Eisenhower Chapter, who will read from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation (1961). Chapter member Vicki Ryder, whose husband served in Vietnam, will offer two songs of Memorial Day remembrance.

Founded in 1985 by U.S. military veterans, VFP is a national non-profit organization that works to “heal the wounds of war, expose the true costs of war, and build a culture of peace.”