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Date: 1/30/2024
AMHERST — Looking for another way to connect with military veterans in the area, Amherst’s Community Responders for Equity, Safety and Service Department will begin hosting twice monthly community breakfast for veterans and members of the community.
Beginning Feb. 2, the gatherings will take place at 8 a.m. inside the large activity room at the Bangs Community Center on the first and third Friday of each month.
At each event there will be a designated veteran or veteran family member who will be prepared to tell his or her story about their relationship with the military.
Eugene Herman, a Vietnam veteran and CRESS outreach volunteer said the community breakfasts are open to anyone interested in making connections and hearing veterans tell their stories.
Herman said CRESS is following the example of a similar outreach effort in Pennsylvania.
“It’s modeled after a program in Pittsburgh called ‘The Veterans Breakfast Club’ where a vet will stand up and talk and anyone who wants to come can come,” he said.
Much like the veteran’s lunch events which CRESS started in July of last year, the goal of the breakfasts is to bring local veterans together and help form a community among them.
Herman said CRESS will be organizing and supporting the initial events, supplying the breakfast fare as well as staffing. Herman will also be speaking about his own experiences at the inaugural event.
“I will be kicking off the event on the [Feb. 2] and I will be talking on the topic of coming home and my experience in the Tete Offensive in 1968,” he said.
Herman said programs like the breakfast and lunch events are designed to bring together veterans from all military generations who may often not be accustomed to speaking about their own experiences.
“So much of my history and my experience has been kept secret,” he said. “Not intentionally secret but kept to myself.”
By his own research and the use of the town census, Herman said there are 387 self-declared veterans in Amherst.
“I don’t know where they are,” he said. “I don’t see them.”
Different from the lunch program is that members of the community are welcome and encouraged to attend the breakfasts as a way to help bring a gap as well as educate by association.
“I want to personalize the veterans and form a better connection between the veterans and the townsfolks,” he said.
More information is available by calling the CRESS office at 413-259-3370.