“My dad called and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got bad news.’ He had gotten my draft notice in the mail. I withdrew from college, enlisted, and scored high enough on my tests that I was told I could pick whatever I wanted to do. I picked counterintelligence, and my recruiter told me that I’d end up working at the field office in Kalamazoo.
I went to counter intelligence school at Fort Holabird in Maryland, and then to the Defense Language Institute in El Paso for 47 weeks of training in the Vietnamese language.
The first thing I thought was, ‘Who speaks Vietnamese in Kalamazoo?’
That’s how I ended up in Vietnam.
We worked with a Vietnamese counterpart who would go into the villages and bring back information. Vietnam was a combat zone, but I didn’t have a combat role so my experience was different from the guys who went through that. But I saw the total devastation that one group of people can commit on another. People were fleeing their homes, taking anything they could carry, everything from pigs to hot sauce.
Many of our veterans come back devastated in a different way, so a few years ago, Mike Jamrog and I were at Stein Haus talking about the challenges veterans face when they get home. We noticed that soldiers from Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan, although they were much better received than we were coming back from Vietnam, were suffering all of the same issues: depression, substance abuse, isolation, and the like. They needed a place that could help them fit back into a society after experiencing the combat and camaraderie of the military.
We started writing our ideas down on a napkin. We felt veterans needed a welcoming environment where they could get connected to veteran-specific information, come in and decompress, stay active by learning or doing a new hobby or skill, share their stories to what degree they were comfortable, and regain that feeling of camaraderie and community they were looking for.
Today, The Bay Veterans Workshop and Learning Center is that place.
It’s a $1.2 million debt-free project to help our veterans, and it’s getting better all the time. 50% was funded by local and state government, 25% by local foundations, and the rest by individual donors. We have a workshop for woodworking, 3D printing, laser engraving, and soon, welding. Matthew Clark from Walking with Warriors connects veterans with resources that I didn’t know existed. There’s not a forum to talk about those things outside, but here, there is. For the first time this summer, veterans could make mental health appointments and meet with someone here, in a place they feel comfortable and trust.
Our mission is to help veterans help themselves. They come here and find purpose. Not that they don’t have a purpose outside of this place in their own lives, but here they can find the activity, information, and camaraderie they need. They feel useful and find community.
And boy, they learn how to win again.”
—Keith Markstrom, Bay Area Veterans Workshop and Learning Center, Bay Veterans Foundation
“The Bay Veterans Workshop and Learning Center is a space has everything someone needs for woodworking. We’ve got quite a few pieces of new equipment from when we opened last June. There’s a new digital drill press, so you don't have to worry about measuring: just punch in your measurement, and that's where it'll drill to. There are a few new saws: a cabinet saw, one set up for ripping, and one for cross-cutting so you don't have to change the blade all the time. There’s a new planer, routing table, laser engraver, 3D Printer and more. We’ll have three welding bays up and running soon, so we’re expanding beyond woodworking as well.
But this place provides more than just activities. Because veterans might be more comfortable coming here than a more institutional setting, we also provide information and programs that can help Vets in other ways, too. A lot of veterans, especially older veterans, are not aware that they have benefits to the VA, and we can help connect them to that information.
We work with Matthew Clark from the Walking with Warriors program to do a Coffee Hour every fourth Thursday of the month to bring in a variety of resources regarding VA benefits, mental health services, and other information. Our records show that we've had around 300 veterans come to the coffee hour, so we’re making an impact.
Something new is that veterans can make mental health appointments with Behavioral Mental Health and meet here at the Center instead of having to go to some place where they might feel less comfortable.
We’re making good progress because as veterans come here and engage however they’re comfortable, we can make some conversation and build trust.
If we help one veteran—that’s success. More than more, more success. We've gotten folks into the VA who wouldn't go there normally. There’s a fellow who referred himself for mental health services after just talking to us for a bit because we gained his trust. Another guy sent me a text saying, ‘Bay Veterans Foundation is my sanity.’ So I asked him if he wanted me to pick him up on my way in, and he said, ‘Yeah.’
The Workshop and Learning Center is a place people look forward to, and for some veterans, that can mean the difference between living and not.
The work will never be done. We need to find more people to pass the torch. If anybody wants to contribute—anything you want to do, come on down here and let’s do it.
We’re a positive force, but we’ve had our critics. We’ve had veteran critics who don’t understand what we’re trying to do.
But we invite anyone to stop by. You don’t have to build something in the workshop, go to a meeting, or sign up for something.
Just have a coffee, a donut, and talk.”
—Keith Markstrom, Bay Area Veterans Workshop and Learning Center, Bay Veterans Foundation
The Bay Veterans Workshop and Learning Center is located at 1009 N Madison Avenue in Bay City, Michigan.
