BOARD MINUTES

BOARD MEMBERS

End of 2010
Gary May
Patrick McCann
Rev. Pierre Williams
Nate Goldshlag

Mike Ferner is the author of "Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran For Peace Reports from Iraq," (Praeger/Greenwood, 2006) based on his trips to that country just prior to, and a year after, the U.S. invasion. His news and commentary articles have appeared in daily newspapers and numerous internet sites. He has been arrested several times for nonviolently protesting the Iraq war, served on Toledo City Council and worked as a union organizer. A Navy Corpsman from '69-'73, he was discharged as a conscientious objector and has been a VFP member since 1985. www.mikeferner.org

Vice-President:
Leah Bolger

Leah joined the Navy in March 1980, and retired in the summer of 2000 as a Commander.  She served all over the world, including tours in Iceland, Bermuda, Japan and Tunisia.

After moving to Corvallis, Oregon in 2004, she formed Chapter 132 and served as its president for three years.  As the chapter president, she has organized numerous marches, rallies, and memorials, has spoken before civic clubs, peace studies classes, presented workshops at peace conferences, has testified before the Oregon state legislature, and has lobbied both state and federal officials. 

She has been arrested several times for acts of civil disobedience in protest of the Iraq War and the Military Commissions Act.

She is a member of the National Steering Committee for the "Bring the Guard Home-It's the Law!" campaign, and serves as the Chairman for the Willamette Peace and Justice Coalition, an organization which she formed. 

USMC 1958-66. USMCR 1966-78. Third MarDiv, Second MarDiv, Company Commander Co. D, MarSptBn. Peace activist since 1967.  Member of VFP since 1985.  Threatened with Court Martial for anti-Vietnam war activities. Founder, Santa Fe Chapter of VFP. 

Gary joined the USMC and served from 1968 to 1969. He was trained as a mechanic but was re-shuffled to 0311 Infantry in the confusion following the  Tet Offensive. He arrived in Vietnam on February 17, 1968 and stepped on a mine on April 12, 1968. Gary suffered a bilateral above-the-knee amputation and was medi-vac'd out through DaNang, Guam and the Philippines to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital. Gary's older brother was in the Vietnam-era Army; Gary's intuition is that his brother was spared because of Gary's wounds. Gary entered college in March of 1969 at the University of Evansville where he earned a BA in Sociology in 1972. After earning an MS in Social Work at the University of Tennessee, Gary worked in the Veterans Administration for 10 years. He then worked in the Vets Center program where he was exposed to Peace Corps veterans and other social justice activists and grew in political consciousness. Gary next went into private clinical social work, specializing in counseling and adoption placement. Gary became the Director of Veterans' Affairs for the State of Indiana in 1989 and served for one year. His next assignment was as the Director of Vocational Rehabilitation for the State of Indiana for one year. He then became the Director of Outpatient services for Charter Hospital. In 1992 Gary became an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Social Work at Evansville, Indiana, where he still serves. Finally, Gary was a Co-founder of VFP Chapter 104 Evansville, IN. Gary coordinated and organized the workshops for the 2007 Veterans For Peace Convention in St. Louis, MO.

Elliott Adams was a paratrooper in the infantry serving in Viet Nam, Japan, Korea, and Alaska. He has served his local community in a variety of capacities such as: President of the School Board, Mayor, Committee Chair of BSA Explorer Post 17, President of Rotary, Master of the Masonic Lodge.

Elliott left politics to become an activist. Attending untold numbers of demonstrations, working at many levels, from stapling signs to doing logistics and organizing work for United For Peace and Justice and War Resisters League, School Of Americas Watch, Peace Has No Borders, Veterans For Peace and many other organizations, at events across the country.

Elliott moved from being a soldier to a nonviolent warrior. He is Nonviolent Training Coordinator for Veterans For Peace, is a nonviolence trainer for the Fellowship Of Reconciliation and on their CCP Leadership Team. He has also done nonviolence and social movement trainings for School Of Americas Watch, Peacemakers of Schoharie, Student Environmental Action Coalition, War Resistors League, and other groups.

He is now dedicating his life to stopping this war and stopping all war.

Service:
U.S. Army, 1^st Lt., 1959-62, Germany (Very early opponent of the Vietnam War and, upon discharge, banned from the base for life.)

VFP-Related Activities:
Member of delegations to Colombia and El Salvador and marcher in various parades under VFP banner. Former chairman of Fairfield County Citizens for Peace, operated under VFP’s non-profit status. Protester at SOA. Bill served two terms in the Connecticut General Assembly and four terms as mayor of Norwalk. He is currently pressing the public relations initiative to gain more national publicity for VFP.

I was active duty Army as a Chinese-language interrogator from 1998-2002, and was honorably discharged as a conscientious objector. Professionally, I am the Director of Alumni Relations and Annual Giving for the University of Minnesota Law School. As a Board member, I will work on strengthening VFP's development efforts.

I became a radical political activist in college in 1968 and was kicked out in 1969 for accidentally getting my picture plastered on the front page of the New York Times, Life, etc. as we escorted a dean out of a building we occupied at Harvard while protesting ROTC and the Vietnam War.  I was drafted in late 1970.  I didn't do things to avoid the draft and went into the army to organize against the war.  The fact that I avoided the stockade probably meant I wasn't that effective, but we started a GI paper in Germany.  They had just stopped sending grunts like me to Vietnam a few months before, although I would not have gone.  I went back to school and had two kids who I helped raise as a half-time single parent.  I worked as an electronics engineer and retired a few years ago.  I do volunteer and VFP work now.

I was active in the Smedley Butler brigade in Boston in the 1980's around Central America issues, but then lapsed until 2005.  I'll never make that mistake again.  As Smedley coordinator, I helped plan the event that got 18 of us arrested on Veterans Day 2007 for being excluded from the American Legion event, and was one of those arrested.  I coordinated the effort that raised $70,000 nationally for Winter Soldier.  I hope to make a difference in VFP by serving on the Board.

Board Member:
Sharon Kufeldt

Sharon Lee Kufeldt served in the USAir Force 1969-1971. As a Vietnam era veteran she sees the clear parallels with the Iraq War. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area where she supports the regional and national growth of VFP. Trained as a Cultural Anthropologist, her life's work as a healer includes developing healing modalities for body/mind/emotional/spiritual post-trauma recovery. She is the Past Commander of American Legion Post #315. She is one of the featured writers in "Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace" edited by Maxine Hong Kingston.

Board Member:
Patrick McCann

Service: USAF 1970-1972.
Patrick McCann has been a member of VFP these past 5 years, and a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) for the last 35 years.
Patrick's VFP involvement includes:

• VFP Chapter 032 (Miami/South Florida) President 2004-5

• VFP Maryland-DC Contact, 2003-4

• Workshop Organizer (Chapter-Building) at Dallas convention

• Organized 4 tours of IVAW vets in S. Florida during 2005

• Board of Directors of Montgomery County (MD) Educators Association.

• Commanded combat intelligence team in Vietnam with 11th Infantry
• Joined VVAW in 1969
• Testified at International War Crimes Enquiry in Stockholm
• Co-founded Citizen Soldier in New York, Vet/GI advocacy
• Co-authored G.I. Guinea Pigs, an expose on health effects of Agent Orange and atomic testing
• Charter member Veterans For Peace
• Writer, articles appearing often in The Nation and Boston Globe
• University lecturer and carpenter
• Ph.D. American Studies; Volunteer editor of VFP's national newsletter
• Author of Vietnam Awakening: My Journey from Combat to the Citizen's Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam
• www.veteran-scholar.com

Board Member:
Hart Viges

I joined the army because of 9/11, thinking that I was going to make the world a better place by killing the "bad guys". I was a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division 1-325 HHC Battalion Mortars. I deployed with my unit to Kuwait in February 2003. In March we went to Iraq and in January of 2004 we returned to the United States. In April I began my journey to become a Conscientious Objector; that December I was Honorably Discharged as a CO. Since then I became a member of Veterans For Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War. I have worked as a GI Rights Hotline Counselor, lobbied for the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act H.R. 1921, gone into high schools with Non-Military Options for Youth, testifird at Winter Soldier, Bring Them Home Now Bus Tour from Crawford, TX and have spoken at rallies. I am a strong advocate of tactics that aim at the supply lines of war. If there is no one to pull a trigger or pay for the trigger, then the war stops. And our mission is accomplished.

Board Member:
Pierre Williams

The Rev. Pierre L. Williams is a native of St. Petersburg, Florida and joined the Marine Corps in 1965. He is a survivor of the Khe Shan seige. Pierre recieved his Bachelor of Arts degree from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg,  and his Master of Divinity Degree from Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia. After being awarded the Master of Divinity degree, he also completed pastoral residency at Johns-Hopkins Hospital located in Baltimore, Maryland. He curently serves as Staff Chaplain at Harbor Hospital, Baltimore. He is an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

Pierre is an authority on federal equal opportunity and minority business enterprise programming. Formerly, he served as Equal Opportunity Officer and Manager of the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration's Minority Business Enterprise Program. He is an active and contributing member of Baltimore United For Peace and Justice, the Phillip Berrigan Memorial Chapter of Veterans For Peace and the National Alliance For the Mentallly ill, where he serves as a "community ambassador."

Pierre has been awarded numerous awards for his advocacy for minority rights in the areas of housing discrimination and developing business opportunties for minority and women businesses. In Baltimore, he is particularly sensitive to the plight of homeless veterans.