Veterans Come Home, Seek Home

Derek Torrellas said he and several other veterans meet at Trinity Bar every week to discuss their time in the service and their goals for their lives as civilians. It’s the ​“diet” version, he said, of having an established open veterans organization in New Haven.

Torrellas, who is 28, is part of a group trying to build a Veterans of Foreign Wars post (VFW) in New Haven, an effort mainly spearheaded by Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) students and alumni. As younger veterans come back in larger numbers from service abroad, organizers say the time is ripe to build a local chapter from the ground up, catering to the newer generations’ needs.

Army veteran Charlie Pickett (pictured at top) provides the power behind the push for the new post. Deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2007 and 2011, he headed to Connecticut to serve in the National Coast Guard in 2011.

He joined the VFW when stationed in Louisiana and was able to transfer that membership to New London. But he realized he could not transfer his membership when he moved to New Haven to study education at SCSU. And the American Legion is only open to the city’s fireman. New Haven is the state’s second largest city, with rapidly growing number of veterans. So why, he asked himself, doesn’t it have a VFW post?

“I can’t figure out why this hasn’t happened yet,” he said. Pickett started collecting signatures and spreading the word about the new post a couple of months ago. He needs 35 signatures to get it off the ground and now has about 27.

Pickett said the ball is rolling faster than he had expected and he has high hopes for the post’s potential. ​“We have no money, no charter and no building,” he said. That also means ​“no roof, no lawn to mow and no worries.”

Many newer veterans are ​“global War on Terrorism veterans” who are just starting their undergraduate studies, Pickett said. They might associate a VFW with the words ​“smoky, bar, war stories,” he said, counting the three terms out on his fingers. Younger veterans want to be involved in activities and want an organization that will help them help each other, he said.

As the population of World War II veterans is ​“dying off,” veterans groups rely on Vietnam and Gulf War veterans to fill the leadership gap, said Giacomo Mordente, who coordinates activities for the close to 300 veterans at SCSU.

Connecticut VFW Senior Vice Commander Bob Bailey (pictured) said younger veterans have more ​“hectic” lives and might be working, studying and raising families. The main goal is to ​“build us to a point where we can continue to fight for benefits” from the government that help veterans, he said.

At the informal meetings at Trinity Bar, veterans eat, drink and share information about how to access governmental benefits and where to go to find a job in the city, Torrellas said. ​“It’s a free exchange of what has worked for people and what hasn’t worked…We enjoy going to unwind,” he said.

Most are SCSU students and most are young. But older veterans sometimes stop by to talk and hang out, and they share their connections.

The bar, once O’Toole’s Irish Restaurant, used to be a recruiting center and still holds fundraisers for local veterans and their causes, Mordente said.

An official organization could also consolidate access to services provided by Yale Law School students, who participate in a clinic offering legal help to veterans, Torrellas said. ​“There are a lot of services out there we don’t know about and that we only learn about when talking with each other,” he said.

Frank Alvarado, co-chair of the city’s Veterans Affairs Advisory Committee, said the city is supporting the effort to create the VFW post.

“We should do everything we can to make it happen,” said Alvarado, an Army vet who served in Vietnam. ​“Hopefully we will find a home” for the post.

The next public information session for the New Haven post is Tuesday, April 14 from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Stetson Branch of the New Haven Public Library at 200 Dixwell Ave.