There’s the round of “I’m sorry” from the others when one of them says he served in the Air Force. The crack about Navy guys lounging around in the sun.

“A lot of us are friends,” Ed Dahn, a Navy veteran, said. “So it’s just a set here and shoot the breeze and spread some B.S.”

“Every once in a while, a little truth comes out,” Army veteran Don Kowalksi chimed in.

“We’re still waiting for that,” said Rick Houchin, a Coast Guard veteran.

News Photo by Justin A. Hinkley Ed Dahn tells a story during a veterans coffee hour event on July 27 at Art in the Loft.

The guys all chuckled.

And so it goes at the monthly veterans coffee hour at Art in the Loft, where 10 to 20 veterans — more than 30 when they put on a full breakfast — gather every month for coffee, donuts, jokes, and camaraderie. Art in the Loft donates the space and various donors help fund the coffee and donuts and the occasional full breakfast.

But beneath all the traded wisecracks and the shooting the breeze and the jelly-filled pastries runs the simple fact that the coffee hour could save a life.

“I come for the camaraderie, as well, but I also come because there’s an epidemic in our nation,” said the Rev. John Shipman, pastor at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church and an Air Force veteran. “And the epidemic is 15 to 23 veterans, every day, take their life, and that is something I would never want.

“The thing that you have to understand is isolation kills,” Shipman added. “This inspires you to say, ‘Wait a second, I’m not alone.'”

News Photo by Justin A. Hinkley Scott Brooks listens as Ed Dahn tells a story during a veterans coffee hour event on July 27 at Art in the Loft.

U.S. Veterans Affairs says more than 6,000 veterans died by suicide in 2020, a rate of roughly 17 vets a day, more than double the rate for the general population.

That’s part of why the Northeast Michigan Community Service Agency, where Houchin works, started hosting the coffee hours in summer 2019: so vets could commune with one another and support each other.

“Even if we don’t talk about mental health issues or (post-traumatic stress disorder) or people’s time in war, just being with friends that have been in the same position … is a step in the right direction,” Houchin said. “It’s just another group of people looking out for you and getting in your business when they need to — in a good way.”

The coffee hours act as a “kind of a support group for us guys,” said Scott Brooks, a Navy veteran.

“Especially the ones that were in ‘Nam, you know, and that have PTSD and stuff like that,” Dahn said. “It just helps.”

News Photo by Justin A. Hinkley Coffee and donuts rest in front of Jerry Gougeon at a veterans coffee hour event on July 27 at Art in the Loft.

Often, someone from the county Veterans Affairs attends the coffee hours and helps the vets connect with local resources, but Houchin said the coffee hours are “no-agenda events” by design. The vets just get together and make the hour what they want it to be.

And the regulars who attend every month like it that way. The only thing they’d change? They want more people — especially younger veterans — to join them.

“We’d like to fill this place up,” Dahn said. “More people. Other than that, just like it is, you know: coffee and donuts and B.S.”

Younger veterans haven’t joined veterans groups the way their predecessors did. Veterans of Foreign Wars, for example, said on its website in 2019 it had about 1.2 million members, almost half of its 1992 peak membership, though it had added a net nearly 25,000 members that year to break a 27-year run of enrollment loss.

The reasons younger men and women don’t sign up are varied, the participants in the coffee hour said. They have to work and have young families and don’t have the time to join. Some veterans groups have been unwelcoming in the past, especially to veterans who didn’t serve in combat or even to those who served in wartime away from the battlefield.

News Photo by Justin A. Hinkley Jerry Gougeon listens as Don Kowalski tells a story during a veterans coffee hour event on July 27 at Art in the Loft.

Plus, young people, “they’re just not joiners,” Dahn said.

But the regulars said they’d welcome any veteran to their coffee hour.

“All are welcome,” Kowalski said.

“We don’t care who you are or …,” Dahn began.

“We don’t even care if you are National Guard,” Kowalski jabbed.

News Photo by Justin A. Hinkley Laurie Karanen holds his cup of joe during a veterans coffee hour event on July 27 at Art in the Loft.

“Or the Coast Guard,” Brooks said as he shot a look and a smile to Houchin.

“I never served in Vietnam,” Dahn said. “I was on-ship for two years, spent 11 months in the Mediterranean.”

“That’s enough,” Brooks said.

Justin A. Hinkley can be reached at 989-354-3112 or jhinkley@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.

If you go

∫ WHAT: Veterans breakfast

∫ WHEN: 9 a.m. Sept. 28

∫ WHERE: Art in the Loft, third floor of the Center Building, 109 N. 2nd Ave., Suite 300, Alpena

∫ HOW MUCH: Free (the breakfast is provided by a local donor)

∫ INFO: Open to anyone who served in the armed forces. RSVP is requested by emailing Rick Houchin at houchinr@nemcsa.org.

News Photo by Justin A. Hinkley From left to right, John Shipman, Jerry Gougeon, Andy Przeslawski, Don Kowalski, Ed Dahn, Scott Brooks, Tom Stafford, and Laurie Keranen gather for a veterans coffee hour on July 27 at Art in the Loft.

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