My wife, Lori, and I recently attended the wedding of my nephew in Fayetteville. While there, we wandered around downtown for a couple of meals and I was reminded of how the city’s affiliation with the monster military machine of Ft. Bragg defines this Southern town.

Fort Bragg is the largest U.S. Army base by population, with more than 52,000 active duty soldiers. The base also has more than 12,000 reservists, almost 9,000 civilian employees and 63,000 active duty family members. Throw in almost 100,000 retirees and their family members, and you begin to get the scope of the military’s impact. All told, the census bureau pegs the metropolitan area’s population at about 375,000.

I wish I knew where Mike is. I haven’t seen or heard from him in 10 years at least. I like to think of someone reading this column, connecting some dots, and then sending him a link, or maybe scissoring it out of the paper and mailing it to him. I like to think of him waiting to get his teeth cleaned at the dentist, picking up the paper and reading this column that is for him, because the memories I have of the stories, the essays, the poems, the short stories and the songs he wrote in my classes haunt me sometimes. He shared his stories with me, and the least I can do his share his story with you. Well, at least part of his story. I wish I knew the rest. Or at least I think I do.

The first time I was aware that my grandfather, Frank Kavanaugh, served in the military was being nine years old in 1994 and watching him talk on the local North Country TV channel, Home Town Cable. 

I was handed a telephone number and told good luck.

In the fall of 2007, I was 22 years old. Once graduate school didn’t pan out, I found myself scrambling to find a gig in the journalism world. Based out of Upstate New York at the time, I applied for a position at The Williston Observer, a small newspaper just across Lake Champlain in Vermont. 

Back before incessant war became a hallmark of American foreign policy, U.S. involvement in global affairs was but a shadow of what it is today. 

Just west of the town of Franklin, along a winding back road heading into the mountains surrounding Wayah Bald, sits a picturesque old farmhouse across the street from a babbling stream. Sitting on the porch of that farmhouse one recent afternoon, gazing out over the free-flowing, peaceful waters, is Tom McNish.

Last August, three-term Asheville Republican Congressman Mark Meadows held his fourth Veterans Solutions Seminar in Waynesville. Last week, he held his fifth. The difference is that this time, protesters were waiting for him. 

Carlie Nichols has vivid memories of growing up during the Vietnam War — specifically she remembers how poorly Vietnam veterans were treated when they returned home from combat. 

“My father was in the military for 23 years and I vividly remember the way our veterans were treated when they came back from Vietnam,” she said. “I was in college and I remember saying to myself, ‘God forbid something like Vietnam ever happens again — I will not do nothing.’ Back then, there really wasn’t an avenue to do something that I felt would be positive.”

The sky is a flawless, cloudless blue over Cataloochee Ski Area as Mark Brogan, 37, suits up for a morning on the slopes. A U.S. Army veteran who was previously stationed in Alaska, Brogan has a longstanding love for the outdoors and for the unique thrill that comes with a snowy slide down the side of a mountain. 

All set up with rented gear and an instructor, Brogan delays his journey to the lift long enough to hold his 19-month-old son Connor in front of the ski school lodge as his wife Sunny snaps a picture. 

War hero and former Principal Chief Robert Youngdeer received the highest honor available in the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians when Tribal Council voted unanimously during its Jan. 4 meeting to name him a Beloved Man.