Young veterans to share stories
Our nation is home to 18.5 million living military veterans, 1.6 million of whom are women.
This month, the Arizona Storytellers Project is honoring veterans by inviting them and their friends, family and community members to a special night of live storytelling from veterans of the most recent era of war.
Six young veterans will take the stage 7 p.m. Monday at Crescent Ballroom in downtown Phoenix to share true, first-person stories about their lives before, during and after their military service.
Theirs are stories of identity, victory and hardship, of finding a sense of leadership and of losing everything.
Above all, they are honest, reflective looks at how military service can change lives.
Of the 18.5 million veterans in U.S. in 2016, 7.1 million served between the Gulf War in August 1990 to present, according to U.S. census data.
A total of 1.6 million are younger than 35. Among that youngest set of veterans is Stephanie Roberts, 31, who will share a story about a life-changing experience that happened while she served as an airtraffic controller in Taji, Iraq.
She said learning to share her story has “become a little bit of my peace.”
“I want other people to realize they can talk about what they went through before falling all the way down to the bottom like I did, and that there there are resources out there, especially for women,” Roberts said.
Corey Harris, 42, is a two-time Iraq War veteran who will also tell a story. He said that although developing his story for the stage has been difficult and even painful, he thinks it’s important.
“I think it’s incumbent on every American to understand war and understand the people that we’re sending in to fight those battles because, as soldiers, we’re always going to do what we’re told to do, and it’s up to our citizens to decide what’s a good war and what’s not, and to know what the cost of that war is,” Harris said.
“No soldier is telling you we shouldn’t go to war. They just want to know they’re going to a war that’s necessary, and if us getting up and talking helps people to understand that humanity, that influences how people feel about war, then I think we’ve all done a good thing.”
Other tellers for this event are Tempe Vice Mayor Robin Arredondo-Savage; Tomas Robles, who is executive director of Living United for Change in Arizona; and Dennis Wagner, an investigative reporter at The Arizona Republic.
The emcees for the show will be Megan Finnerty, founder of the Storytellers Project, and Kyle Mitchell, a U.S. Army veteran from the Navajo Nation.
Arizona Storytellers Project is providing live captioning to help people who have hearing loss. For ASL interpreting or other accommodations, please contact in fo@storytellerproject.com. Crescent Ballroom is wheelchair accessible, and this is a seated event.