Thursday, March 26, 2009

Place of Angels

If you live in the western suburbs of Chicago, or if you're willing to drive out there on Monday night, please consider attending Place of Angels, a play written by Bob Adams and produced as a fundraiser for the Midwest Shelter for Homeless Veterans. Bob is a friend of mine and a combat veteran of Vietnam. He came speak to a high school English class that I was teaching several years ago to answer questions for my students who were reading The Things They Carried. His play was first written and produced in the seventies to much acclaim. Actually, I'm assuming acclaim because Bob is pretty freakin' cool. Recently, he founded a shelter and it is the intense passion of his life to take care of soldiers who have not survived war as intact as he has. Of course, Bob's stability has taken years of hard work and much failure but he still considers himself a product of luck and grace so since "there but for the grace of God go I" he used his social work credentials to start making a dent in our nation's shameful homeless veteran problem. The VA estimates that nearly 200,000 veterans are homeless on any given night and that nearly double that experience homelessness at some point over the course of a year.

So, Monday night, consider spending $50 on a theater ticket to hear the story of Bob's platoon mates and to support Bob's mission to make sure that no one's platoon mates are left behind.

Place of Angels
Monday, March 30 at 7:00
College of DuPage McAninch Arts Center
630.942.4000
www.atthemac.org

For more information on the Midwest Shelter for Homeless Veterans, please visit their website.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I wish I could go Monday night. We read The Things They Carried in a class in college and I really enjoyed it. Stupid busy Monday nights.