Veterans Find Closure Through Writing

For the fifth consecutive year, Fordham has made Military Times magazine’s annual “Best for Vets” list of the top colleges and universities for service members, military veterans, and their families.

Fordham has been ranked regularly on the list, thanks to the diverse and comprehensive programs provided by the FordhamVets Initiative — which helps veterans transition from the military to college life — and to the financial support the school provides through the Yellow Ribbon Program.

One program that has been particular helpful to Fordham veterans is the Veterans Writing Workshop, which has been held at Fordham’s Westchester campus since 2010 and recently expanded to the Lincoln Center campus. The workshops are held three times per year at both campuses.

Veterans meet weekly to learn about and practice the craft of writing and to receive feedback and support from their peers. The workshop is “intensive and creative,” said founder and instructor David Surface, and functions primarily as a writing class rather than as a support group or a therapy session. Even so, it’s difficult to separate the therapeutic value of such a group from its artistic value.

“Writing can be healing,” Surface said. “When you write about your experiences, particularly in a serious, intensive, craft-based way, there’s something that happens that doesn’t happen in a therapy session or support group. It has to do with taking mastery of your experience, or taking control of your experience in a way.”

The veterans are not required to write specifically about their experience at war because not all of them are ready to put their trauma into words, Surface said. Instead, they write about whatever inspires them in the moment, whether it’s a memory from the battlefield or a hike with family.

At the conclusion of the workshop, the veterans’ writings are published as an anthology, which the veterans share in public readings and events. In addition to preserving and celebrating their writing, Surface said, the book helps to raise awareness about veterans’ experiences by hearing it in the service members’ own words. This year’s book, Afterwords: Looking Back, marks the 15th edition of the publication.

“There’s a lot of talk these day about the military/civilian divide in our country. Civilians don’t understand what veterans have experienced and vice versa,” he said. “But having the veterans themselves write about these experiences is one of the best ways to help narrow that gap.”

The Veterans Writing Workshop was developed in 2010 through collaboration between Arts Westchester (formerly the County Arts Council), the Hudson Valley Writers Center, and Fordham University Westchester as part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ The Big Read Program. Free of charge, the workshop series is open to veterans from every conflict.

Often, Surface said, a workshop will find veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan sitting side by side with veterans from Korea, Vietnam, and even World War II.

“They talk about their stories, about their feelings,” he said. “There is a comradeship that forms.”

Over and over again he has seen the veterans draw on that natural bond to help each other not only with their writing, but also with the struggles they face in the aftermath of war. He recalled an instance when one veteran decided to write about an event that had triggered a severe post-traumatic stress disorder. When the writing process became distressing for him, another veteran in the workshop offered support.

“He just sat with him while he wrote the story,” Surface said. “They help each other through these experiences.”

In addition to continuing the workshops at Fordham’s Westchester and Lincoln Center campuses, Surface will be running a Women’s Veterans Writing Workshop starting this spring at Arts Westchester. And in February, a Families of Veterans Writing Workshop will begin at Fordham Westchester for friends, family members, and supporters of military personnel.

“What I hope they learn is that their own experiences — their own memories, feelings, and thoughts — are valid,” Surface said. “They don’t need to look outside of themselves for material to write about. I just try to give them skills and tools to do that.”

— Joanna Mercuri

New Coordinator and New Space Greet Incoming Vets

Vets take in the information at the orientation.

In an effort to coordinate disparate veteran groups from across the University, the School of Professional and Continuing Studies (PCS) has hired a Veterans Coordinator and has set aside space for the vets to meet, hang out, study, and organize events. The space will be staffed with student vets hired through the Veterans Administration’s work-study program.

The initiatives were announced last Thursday when Fordham welcomed dozens of veterans to an orientation at the Law School’s sleek new mock courtroom.

For several years, the Fordham vet community has been nurtured by Michael Gillan, Ph.D., and James Hennessey, Ph.D., through the Fordham Veterans Initiative. But with Gillan recently retired as associate vice president of Fordham Westchester, the School of Professional and Continuing Studies (PCS) Dean Isabelle Frank, Ph.D., has assumed the role of co-chair alongside Hennessy, who is dean at the Graduate School of Education.

Fordham Student Veterans Association President Pat Hackett and B-Vets President Chris Maloney give vets the lowdown. 

“We have the largest number of vets by far at PCS, so it was a very natural transition for us,” said Frank. “We have great hopes that the school will be able to help vets University wide.”

The need for coordination is clear. Each school at Fordham has its own veterans group; PCS’s Armed Forces of Fordham is the largest with 300 members. Then there’s Graduate School of Business Administration’s B-Vets, and the Graduate School of Social Services’ GSSVets, with about 30 members each. SERV, at the Law School group, has 15 members. The University is also affiliated nationally through the Student Veteran’s Association; there are at least 1,000 members of Fordham Veteran Alumni; and several veteran organizations partner with Fordham.

Luis Garcia and fellow vets met up at the Law School's new digs.

“This is something we started talking about last year,” said Pat Hacket, a PCS senior and president of Student Veteran’s Association at Fordham. “We figured we could tackle multiple issues, multiple problems, from multiple venues, with everyone coming to one place.”

Mike Abrams, who teaches a seminar to the vets on career transition leadership at PCS, has assumed the role of coordinator.

The new veterans space is in Room 839 at the Lowenstein Center.

Several events have already been planned for the school year, some in coordination with other veteran groups and schools, like tonight’s Ruck March at Merchants' Gate Plaza, the entrance to Central Park at Columbus Circle at 6:30 p.m. The Fordham Vets will meet with vets from around the city in an effort to raise consciousness of veteran suicide.

Other events on the docket include the 9/11 Heroes Run on Randall’s Island on September 6, the Veterans Day Parade on November 11, and a gala benefiting Toys for Tots on December 13.

-Tom Stoelker

Military Times Names Fordham a Top School for Veterans

Fordham University is once again among the top 25 schools in the nation for returning veterans, according to the “Best for Vets” rankings released by Military Times on Nov. 11.

Michael Gillan, Ph.D., associate vice-president and co-chair of FordhamVets Task Group, was in the middle of New York's Veterans Day Parade on a Fordham sponsored float when he got the news.

"What veterans share in common coming back from any conflict is that they want to get on with their lives," said Gillan. “They want to get on with being students."

He added that the University's commitment to the Yellow Ribbon GI Education Enhancement Program no doubt played a role. The program was an optional provision of the Post-9/11 GI Bill passed in 2009 and is considered the most comprehensive expansion of veteran education benefits since World War II.

Even though there is a national cap on the Yellow Ribbon benefits, the University has bypassed the limit and increased its Yellow Ribbon commitment to cover all tuition and fees for Post-9/11 veterans, he said.

"We are once again able to say 'Top 25,'" said Gillan. "Plus, this is the fourth consecutive year that Fordham is the #1-rated private school in the metropolitan region."

--Tom Stoelker

Oct. 22: Meet Veterans and Hear Their Stories

On Tuesday, Oct. 22, Fordham's Veterans Writing Workshop will celebrate the publication of the 10th anthology of writings, Afterwards-The Ones We Save, produced by workshop participants. Held at the Fordham Westchester Campus weekly, the workshop is one of the services to metropolitan area veterans offered since 2009 by the FordhamVets Initiative.   

A reception and reading will begin at 7 p.m. at the Westchester campus, 400 Westchester Ave., West Harrison, N.Y. RSVP to gillan@fordham.edu 

If you'd like to know more about the writing workshop and hear excerpts from the veterans' past writings, you can view last year's reading here or you can purchase one of the series here.

Vietnam Memorial Dedication Speech

The following remarks were delivered by retired U.S. Army Gen. John M. “Jack” Keane, GSB ’66 on April 21, 2013, at the dedication of a new Vietnam War Memorial honoring the 23 University alumni who perished in that conflict. 

Thank you Bill for your kind introduction and for all you and Terry have done to find all the Vietnam Vets and to get us all here. Please join me, everyone, in expressing our appreciation. 

Father McShane, faculty and staff, families, friends and loved ones of our fallen classmates, Vietnam Vets, and those who were so generous as benefactors in rebuilding the chapel's magnificent organ and, of course, the Fordham family. 

What a truly marvelous dedication mass and ceremony: the sound, the music, the voices were all so magical, we were all uplifted by such majesty. I believe our Fordham chapel exceeded St Pat's cathedral (and Bill Burke whispered in my ear, "I think I'm in Rome"). What a touch of class, Fr McShane. 

After World War II ended, a war weary nation began an epic struggle with the aggressive and assertive Soviet Union, which turned into a rush to develop the best nuclear weapons and the best missiles and bombers to deliver them. An arms race, as part of an ideological clash, that would last for 50 years and while we, fortunately, never had a direct confrontation, we fought two wars to contain the Soviet Union and communism, one in Korea and the other in Vietnam. Both culturally different places for America, far away, and places most Americans had never heard of and most certainly had never been. 

We grew up in the shadows of WWII, our fathers, uncles, and almost all our relatives participated. We saw the pictures, heard some of the stories and knew from our history classes they were part of something very important and even life defining, for some. Korea and Vietnam were much smaller wars but Vietnam was the longest and the most controversial. Most of us came from working class families in the NYC area and most were first generation college students. Fordham University was also an extension of the Catholic education experience (I told my military buddies that after 16 years of Catholic education, transition to the military was easy!!). 

Fordham, the best of the Catholic universities at the time, was a great educational experience, to be sure, with a liberal arts foundation, regardless of what school you attended, to include a minor in philosophy and four years of theology. But as we all know, Fordham University was even more than that, because it was about developing character and strengthening our spiritual and moral values our families provided us. Fordham, then and now, emphasizes service--that submitting to something larger than self is part of our human contribution in the journey of life. 

For 200 plus Fordham graduates, service in Vietnam seemed a normal thing to do despite the fact you could get a deferment rather easily for education, marriage, the peace corps or joining the national guard(today if you joined the national guard you are going to war). Indeed, for us it was an honor to serve, much as our father and uncles had done. Unlike our relatives most of us would serve as officers. 

If you know our military history, then you are aware, as Americans, we normally get off on the wrong foot in war--true of the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWII in Africa and the Pacific, and dramatically true in Korea, and Vietnam was no exception. Churchill said of us (and this is a paraphrase): "These Americans are different, they exhaust all the options and then get to the solution faster than anyone else". America's military is a reflection of its people, intellectually flexible, and operationally, very adaptable. 

In Vietnam, we had the wrong strategy for 3 years from 1965 to 1968, fighting an unconventional war, with conventional tactics, till we changed to a counter insurgency strategy under General Abrams in 1968 and defeated the Viet Cong insurgency by 1971. However, we had evaporated American political will because of the length of the war and the apparent lack of progress (the media had given up on the war and the new progress and success was hardly reported; to this day most Americans don't know). Henry Kissinger, now a dear friend, and the Nixon administration secretly negotiated a peace, which would allow US forces to exit Vietnam by 1973 and almost certainly guarantee a subsequent North Vietnam invasion, which took place successfully in 1975. 

For those of us who fought there, while the fight at time was challenging, it was certainly not controversial. North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, from the South, were the aggressors, who were intimidating, terrorizing, and killing the people of South Vietnam to force their capitulation. We saw it first hand, we were there to stop it! And in doing so, day in and day out, success was the norm and failure the exception. We found out much about ourselves, our character, how to accept our fears and at times terror, our love for our brothers who we fought with, and, yes, our values. We were proud to be Americans, having come so far, to risk so much, for others we did not know. 

Twenty three of us perished. More than 10% of those who served, which is higher than almost all universities to include our service academies. 

--8, Army; 6, Air Force; 5, Marines; 4, Navy --mostly pilots and ground combat soldiers --all were officers, except one sergeant and one was a Navy Chaplain, catholic priest. --the first was killed in 1964 and the last in 1973. 

Their decorations for valor is most extraordinary and is a story itself, it is quite remarkable: 

None of our 23 classmates wanted to die but what made them different and, if I may, special, is that they were willing to! I have been in awe of this reality all my life. Our classmates were willing to put at risk everything that they cared about in life, everything: the opportunity to have a long and full life, to have friends in their life, to be a parent, to have love in their life, to love and to be loved. 

They were willing to give up all of that for what? Why did they do it? In my view, they did it out of a simple, yet, profound sense of duty, which Fordham helped to inspire. And, they did it for one another. This is true honor! And we can never take this kind of devotion for granted. 

I am so proud, that our beloved Fordham University extended to our fallen classmates the respect and honor their devotion deserves. 

Yes, we were soldiers once, and, young and our fallen classmates remain soldiers and young, forever. God bless them, their families and loved ones, our Vietnam Veterans and our fellow Fordham Alumni who are serving in Afghanistan(1 have seen them many times these last 12 years in Iraq and Afghanistan and they make us proud} and God Bless our beloved Fordham University and our magnificent country, the United States of America. 

Thank you.

Download the Names of the 23 Fordham alumni who died in Vietnam here (pdf)

Disabled American Veterans Mobile Service Visits New York in October

The nonprofit Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Mobile Service Office will be at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center, 130 West Kingsbridge Road, in The Bronx, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday, October 24 and 25.

Many veterans are confused about benefits and services they’ve earned, and there are changes from year to year. The DAV provides counseling and claim filing assistance free to all veterans and members of their families.

Other Dates and Locations

October 26, 2011 | 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Northport VA Medical Center,
79 Middleville Road, Northport, N.Y.

October 27, 2011 | 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Northport VA Medical Center,
79 Middleville Road, Northport, N.Y.

October 28, 2011 | 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Disabled American Veterans Department of New York
162 Atlantic Avenue, Lynbrook, N.Y.

For further information contact Michael Mills at (212) 807-3157.

Serving Those Who Have Served

Since 2001, more than 1.6 million American troops have been deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Though a large number in absolute terms, veterans of those two conflicts comprise just over one half of one percent of the U.S. population. Despite sometimes intense media coverage, many Americans are unfamiliar with the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on veterans, and of those veterans' needs when they return home.

"Serving Those Who Have Served: Social Work with Active Duty Military, Veterans, and Their Families," is a presentation on the coming home experience of combat veterans, and will offer insight into military culture. The presentation will be held at New York Presbyterian Hospital (Main Building), at 21 Bloomingdale Rd. in White Plains, N.Y., on Wednesday, November 18, 2009, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. It is sponsored by the National Association of Social Workers, New York State/Westchester Division, and is free and open to the public.

• Serving Those Who Have Served
• Wednesday, Nov. 18 | 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
• New York Presbyterian Hospital (Main Building) | 21 Bloomingdale Rd. in White Plains, N.Y.
• Free and Open to the Public
• Information: Anne Treantafeles, (914) 367-3108

Presenters

• Mary Ann Forgey, Ph.D, LCSW, associate professor of social service, Fordham University, will speak about issues related to cultural sensitivity and competence based on her experience and research in working with active duty service members and their families.
• Sgt. Arthur Moore, U.S. Army, Vietnam War veteran, and Spc. Fianna Sogomonyan, N.Y. Army National Guard, Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) veteran, will offer personal insights on issues faced by those returning from war.
• Elizabeth Rahilly, LMSW, and Kristen Tuttle, LCSW, Veterans Administration Hudson Valley, Hudson Valley First Responder Initiative.
• Paul Tobin, president and CEO, VetsFirst, will speak on his work with disabled veterans and their families.

Forgey will offering a course at Fordham's Lincoln Center campus in spring 2010 on Working with Military Families and Veterans; she will offer the course at Fordham Westchester during the summer session. Her talk will tie together the threads offered by the other presenters with her extensive knowledge and experience in working with the military. This talk is informed by her course syllabus.

More Than 500 Colleges Sign onto Yellow Ribbon Program

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that starting in fall 2009, veterans will be able to attend more than 500 private colleges and out-of-state public institutions at a reduced price, thanks to a dollar-for-dollar federal matching program created under last year’s GI bill. Monday marked the final day for colleges nationwide to commit to the Yellow Ribbon Program, under which the federal government will match any financial aid that participating colleges provide to veterans above the cost of the most expensive public college in their state. (See: "More Than 500 Colleges Commit to Participate in New Veterans' Program" [Subscription Required])

Fordham is a Yellow Ribbon university (there is an open house at Fordham Westchester this evening). The FordhamVets program ensures that the University is as veterans-friendly as possible. Fordham participates in the Yellow Ribbon Program on all campuses, which covers all tuition and fees for Post 9/11 veterans with full benefit eligibility: http://www.fordham.edu/vets

Contact Lynne O'Connell: (914) 367-3322, lyoconnell@fordham.edu