Whether they found themselves drafted during a conflict and spent a few years in service or they invested a career in the military, veterans often seem to open up about certain parts of their lives more easily in the company of others who have served.
“Veterans have a common bond, and a lot of times, it’s easier to talk with a veteran than just anybody,” Cobb Senior Services veteran outreach program leader Mike Nichols said.
Along with Veteran Connection, a Cobb Senior Services program, Atlanta’s former service members have a variety of outlets for honoring and visiting with each other, and they may get to take a trip while they’re at it. Here are a few options.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
Veteran Connection — Cobb County
cobbcounty.org/senior-services/events/veteran-connection
Veteran Connection offers several types of activities that give veterans room to get to know one another, and there’s also assistance through passing information from other organizations. Being around others who have served can be a way to sift through memories from decades ago in a way other service members understand, Nichols told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“Veteran Connection was created to provide a setting where veterans could come together in a personal type of meeting or setting where they can develop connections that promote well-being and where they process experiences with people who have similar life experiences. Our main mission is just to recognize, honor, inform and assist veterans,” he said.
Connection hosts six meetings each month — one of which women veterans host — at different locations. Nichols said he sees between 60 and 80 veterans monthly — a different group at each event. Program participants have the opportunity to take field trips on a county charter bus to places such as the National Infantry Museum & Soldier Center in Columbus and the Museum of Aviation at Robins Air Force Base. In recent years, Connection has also participated in community-wide events honoring Vietnam and Korean War veterans and women veterans, Nichols said. A key effort the organization is supporting this year is Operation Greenlight, a National Association of Counties initiative in which businesses in Cobb County will light their buildings in green beginning Nov. 7.
Nichols said Cobb is home to 42,191 veterans. According to Nichols, approximately 25,740 of them are over age 65. The four-person Veteran Connection team does what it can to keep them informed.
“We do a lot to make sure we can pass along as much information as possible from Veterans Affairs, the Georgia Department of Veterans Services and from different organizations,” Nichols said.
Other communities are taking note of Cobb’s efforts.
“Veteran Connection has kind of set an example,” he said. “We’ve had people from different counties call and ask, ‘What is Cobb doing?’”
Nichols, who is an Army veteran himself, seems honored to serve this population and raise awareness about it.
“It’s important, and there are so many of these people — it’s been an honor to get to know them. They’ve done some extraordinary things in their lives,” he said. “People really need to know what a veteran is.”
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
Atlanta Vietnam Veterans Business Association — Atlanta
The Atlanta Vietnam Veterans Business Association began in 1981 as those who served in the conflict returned home and began putting the next chapter of their lives together, according to Carl “Skip” Bell, 77, the organization’s current president.
“There were people in Atlanta — businesspeople who had come back from Vietnam, done their thing in the Army, and they got out and started making their own lives again — their own careers. And they were successful businesspeople — realtors, lawyers, bankers — but your average Vietnam vet, according to media and movies and all that, was some kind of a strung-out dude,” Bell said. “We wanted people to know that we had done something else with our lives after we got back and that we weren’t these broken people. That was really why the organization started ... to sort of change the public image of the Vietnam veteran. We were all proud that we served and still are, but we wanted to show that we could be successful, too.”
The West Cobb resident, now retired from an information systems career, was on active duty with the Army for 14 years and spent 17 years with the Army Reserve. Now, he joins the AVVBA for its once-a-month lunch meetings, which feature speakers such as a representative from the Georgia Department of Veterans Service.
The AVVBA also has a hand in honoring locals who died while serving. Over the past 40 years, Bell said members have recognized Atlantans killed in action with 26 memorials at places such as Peachtree Center, CNN Center, Georgia World Congress Center and the University of North Georgia.
“We have memorialized those people, gotten their families involved, put a bronze plaque up,” Bell said. “We have tried to make sure that people remembered that people gave the ultimate sacrifice at the behest of our country helping another country.”
There’s also now an AVVBA scholarship fund for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans looking to further their educations. The association also partners with the Atlanta History Center for its oral history program and its Veterans Day celebration.
For organizations looking for talks about the Vietnam War, the AVVBA has a speakers bureau, which Bell said supplies visitors for school classes. The association has published two books — collections of stories from members about their war experiences, and members march every year in the Georgia Veterans Day Parade in downtown Atlanta. Members have also participated in trips to Camp Toccoa at Currahee and to Washington D.C. to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Would-be participants just need to be Vietnam veterans to join the association, which for Bell seems to have been a comforting experience.
“The first time I walked into one of the AVVBA meetings, I felt like I was home because we all had that common denominator of having served in Vietnam or on the ocean outside of Vietnam.”
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
Atlanta World War II Roundtable — Dunwoody
The Atlanta World War II Roundtable, now in its 35th year, hosts regular lunch meetings that center on WWII veterans, along with speakers with associated with that era.
Communications representative Bill LeCount said the group meets 10 times each year, and attendance is open to the general public. The varied backgrounds of the attendees and speakers sometimes lead to surreal connections. LeCount recalled a visit from one speaker — a concentration camp survivor — who was seated during a portion of the meeting next to a WWII veteran who discovered Dachau, the Nazi government’s first regular concentration camp.
“They had never met before so just watching the two of them interact — it was something to see,” LeCount said. “There’s always some connection (with the speakers) to WWII. It does get harder and harder because WWII vets are passing away at about 600 a day.”
There’s always a designated time for questions for the speaker, which LeCount said can stretch out depending on the direction of the conversation.
The Roundtable maintains ongoing relationships with other like-minded groups, sometimes helping with finances for area veterans associations lunches, LeCount said. The organization also has ties to WWII Heritage Days, which takes place at the Atlanta Regional Airport each year, and an annual gathering of WWII-era planes at Dekalb-Peachtree Airport.
The Roundtable also contributes to education-based charitable efforts, and when it can support its community and simultaneously provide a benefit to its members, it’s likely to move on the opportunity. Such was the case when a couple of high schoolers needed help collecting funds for a Pearl Harbor trip.
“I heard of a couple of kids in one of the local high schools that, as part of their junior ROTC, they were going to Pearl Harbor — they were raising money,” LeCount said. “So, I went to the board and said, ‘Hey, this is a great chance. This is what we’re all about. How about we chip in and help get one of these kids over there? So, we didn’t pay for their trip, but we made a hefty donation to help them get there with the agreement they would come back and show us pictures and tell us all about it, which they did. And so, it was a win-win situation. We got a free speech, and they got some help getting over there.”
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