Veterans find peace in shared reading

What a lovely idea, and how grand that funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the strong work of the N.C. Humanities Council made it reality.

Each month at the Chapel Hill Public Library, readers come together to share book readings and thoughts and life experiences. It is the experience – hard-won in military service – that brings them to N.C. Vets for Words, a group now including veterans from all backgrounds, after a beginning last year in which combat veterans were the core. These readers, yes, share more than an interest in Steinbeck or Hemingway or poetry or works about the military. They’ve been there, in service, some in combat service, and because of that they find they can relate to each other, and with each other, to selected literature.

The Humanities Council works to celebrate the arts and individuals who enrich the lives of North Carolinians through education and culture. It named an annual award for which it accepts public nominations for John T. Caldwell, the late beloved chancellor of N.C. State University, who was a founder of the council.

The Vets for Words group is a great example of a program that helps those who are in it, and how participants can help each other. One veteran, noting that modern vets of places such as Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t have the same kinds of homecomings as those of World War II, said the vets in the reading group “struggle with coming to terms with an end without celebration.” That’s a poetic way to put it.

This story was originally published April 17, 2016 at 5:11 PM with the headline "Veterans find peace in shared reading."