Coffeehouse by Fort Lewis would support veterans

Dan DeLong / P-IMateo Rebecchi is among a group of veterans trying to start a coffeehouse to offer soldiers and their families support and help.

Coffeehouse by Fort Lewis would support veterans
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Last updated 12:54 a.m. PT
'We're trying to reach out to soldiers'
By CAROL SMITH
P-I REPORTER

A group of local veterans hopes to launch a coffeehouse near Fort Lewis where soldiers – both active-duty and out of the military – could brew both good java and good company.

The coffeehouse would be a safe place, off base, where GIs and their families could go for support, information about their rights and a chance to express what's going on in their lives, said Mateo Rebecchi, 24, a student at Seattle Central Community College and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, one of the coffeehouse backers.

"We're trying to reach out to soldiers who feel they have nowhere to go," he said.

The coffeehouse would be the third such effort around the country, said Molly Gibbs, a community organizer who has worked with Veterans for Peace and other Seattle advocacy groups.

Rising concerns about the effect of longer deployments, the increase in post-deployment suicide rates, sexual assaults in the military, PTSD and employment have created a need for a place where people can go to share experiences and find resources to cope, she said.

These kinds of coffeehouses have a time-honored tradition in the post-Vietnam era, said Gibbs, whose first job in the mental health field was with Vietnam vets, every one of whom came back "indelibly shaped" by that experience. Something one of them told her has stayed with her and kept her motivated to help veterans connect.

"I had a friend who was a medic in Vietnam," she said. "He told me, 'I left who I was over there – I never came back.' "
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