Two students will be contributing their stories at a Veterans Breakfast Club event in late April at the Heinz History Center.

The meetings revolve around discussion and storytelling among veterans of all ages and backgrounds. These events take place all over the Pittsburgh area, covering six or seven locations, according to Todd DePastino, executive director. Typically, these get-togethers take in 50 to 150 guests, most of which are older veterans.

“[The events] tend to be very uplifting and very high-energy,” said DePastino.

The heart of these events are found in the informal telling of stories rather than formal speaking roles, with tales that span from humorous anecdotes to accounts of prisoner-of-war scenarios.

“Every time I think I heard it all, someone comes up with a new story I’ve never heard,” DePastino said.

The next event coming up is on April 30 and runs from 6:30-8:30 p.m. for general admission. A VIP reception is held the preceding hour, according to the official invitation.

Veteran’s Club advisor and senior political science major James Gaddis, a Navy veteran, plans on attending the event. Gaddis tries to talk about veteran life in a way that doesn’t bring attention to his own experiences but rather to the issues at hand. Bringing awareness to veteran life and incorporating veterans into the “public community” is essential to helping veterans, according to Gaddis.

“If people don’t know about [veteran life], they’ll be less willing to work with veterans,” Gaddis said.

Senior intelligence and national security major Ryan Vickers also hopes to share his story at the event, he said. He served in the Army as a scout, which is a job concerning the gathering of intelligence.

Point Park involvement in Veterans Breakfast Club events is not new. Associate professor of photography and photojournalism Christopher Rolinson put together a film with the same title as the events, “The Veterans Breakfast Club.” In this film, which was finished in 2014, he conducted interviews with World War II veterans who attended the breakfasts.

Rolinson has attended over 20 of these Veterans Breakfast Club events, as an Army veteran himself, he said. What really stuck out from these events for him was how “humble” the veterans were.

“They’ve spent years not telling their stories,” Rolinson said.

According to Rolinson, a lot of veterans keep these stories to themselves until they’re older.

“I haven’t heard any stories from [younger veterans],” he said.

Despite their young age, Vickers, Gaddis and the Veteran’s Club is impassioned in helping a group of people filled with many elderly folks.

“What was really moving [at Veterans Breakfast Club events] was seeing younger and older vets bond,” said DePastino.