EMU Today

YPSILANTI – Students, faculty and staff veterans at Eastern Michigan University are playing key roles in staging the fourth annual “Stories of Service” veterans storytelling event at Ann Arbor’s Hill Auditorium from 7-9 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 5.

“The Stories of Service” audience size has grown 250 percent for this annual event due to the quality of Veterans stories from World War II to the present, and for the power and beauty of the music that frame them,” says Michael Wise, Lt. Colonel, USA, (Ret.), who serves as assistant director at the Lt. Col. Charles S. Kettles Military and Veteran Services Resource Center at EMU.

Wallace Bridges, a professor in the Department of Communication, Media, and Theatre Arts at Eastern, will direct the storytelling event. Bridges is an Army Veteran who once supervised the handling of nuclear tipped Pershing tactical missiles in Germany. He has acted in movies, television commercials and plays, including the Purple Rose Theater, and has directed 20 plays at Eastern.

Kate Melcher, a former US Army Apache attack helicopter pilot, and Vietnam War Huey helicopter pilot Dale Throneberry, now the voice of Ann Arbor’s Veterans Radio, will serve as co-hosts for the event, which will feature five storytellers spanning three generations of American warriors.

Tickets are free at the event website and donations are encouraged. EMU undergraduate students will receive Learning Beyond the Classroom credit for attending. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

“Other states have as many as five or more Fisher Houses located at VA Healthcare facilities to provide no-charge accommodations to the families of our ailing active service members and Veterans during procedures. Michigan has none, and we are committed to changing that,” says Dan Patrick, Director of Outreach and Community Engagement for Fisher House Michigan and an EMU student.

Patrick, who is studying journalism and literature at Eastern, was severely wounded by a grenade blast while serving as a Marine in Iraq in 2006, His father stayed at a Fisher House near Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, MD during Patrick’s medical procedures.

Army veteran Nathan Eroh, an electronic media and film student at Eastern, is capturing the veterans’ stories on video and is supporting the social media campaign for “Stories of Service” and Fisher House Michigan.

EMU’s Wise, Bridges and Patrick promise a good show. 

“You will learn the difference between World War II and modern military intelligence gathering, what it is like to find and repatriate the remains of lost World War II pilots, and the differences between growing up in a ghetto, patrolling the Korean DMZ and telling your story on National Public Radio,” Bridges says. “You will also hear from a nurse who dealt with the battlefield carnage of Vietnam and helped bring home so many of our wounded combatants.”

Sponsors for the event include Michigan Medicine, Old National Bank of Ann Arbor, MASCO, the Mandell and Madeleine Berman Private Foundation, Ardis and Mike Cicchella, Sr., McKinely, NuStep and the Rotary Club of Ann Arbor.

GI Jobs ranks Eastern Michigan University third among the 3,000 universities in the United States for being Veteran and military friendly. For more information, see the EMU Veterans website.

For more information on the event, contact Lawrence Dolph at 734- 516-5841 or email him at Ldolph@RFDInsight.com.

About Eastern Michigan University

Founded in 1849, Eastern is the second oldest public university in Michigan. It currently serves 20,000 students pursuing undergraduate, graduate, specialist, doctoral and certificate degrees in the arts, sciences and professions. In all, more than 300 majors, minors and concentrations are delivered through the University's Colleges of Arts and Sciences; Business; Education; Health and Human Services; Technology, and its graduate school. EMU is regularly recognized by national publications for its excellence, diversity, and commitment to applied education. For more information about Eastern Michigan University, visit the University's website.