VETERANS’


VOICES PROVES WRITING IS GOOD MEDICINE


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“This is a story about a man who was not ready to become a man, and least of all, a brave soldier.”


Lawrence E. Rahn VAMC Minneapolis, Minn.


Charles Bartley displays one of his many writing awards.


ichael Harrod has literally “written myself out of” some very desperate moments. He gave some of the credit for that to the Hospitalized Veterans Writing Project (HVWP) in


the Fall 2010 issue of its national publication, Veterans’ Voices. “Many a night I have awakened between 1:00 and 3:00 a.m. with the problems of my world sitting squarely on my shoulders,” he wrote in a piece he submitted through the VA Medical Center of Richmond, Va. “I would think of suicide for a few minutes, and then, I would turn to my word processor or my computer and work on a story for Veterans’ Voices.”


Insomnia and suicidal thoughts like his are two of countless topics veterans have covered in their prose, poems and drawings for the program for more than 50 years. Veterans’ Voices publishes the work of military men and women writing about the bonds of friendship, physical pain, trauma, addiction, recovery, lost comrades, and so much more. Some tell of boyhood memories or sing nature’s beauty while others relate the horrors of combat. Some talk of faith, politics or comic book heroes.


Although writing’s value as a therapeutic tool was unproven at the time, HVWP was founded in 1946 by Elizabeth Fontaine with the support of the Chicago North Shore Chapter of Theta Sigma


16 LADIES AUXILIARY VFW MAGAZINE


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