Join us from 9-11 a.m. the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of each month for an informal presentation about a military conflict, branch or event. Come early to enjoy light refreshments.
Coffee and Conversation Archive
Most of our Coffee and Conversation presentations are recorded and added to our museum’s YouTube channel. To view the full list of videos with their associated links, please click on the link below:
Upcoming Presentations
If you or someone you know is interested in presenting for a Coffee & Conversation, please contact: Mike Fellows (michaelfellows1@msn.com) or Ed Miccio (ed.miccio@comcast.net).
22 June – Flint Whitlock
Flint is an award-winning author and military historian and frequent C&C speaker. He is a former US Army officer who served on active duty from 1965 to 1970, including a tour in Vietnam. His books include Soldiers on Skis, The Rock of Anzio, and The Fighting First, among others. He is Editor-in-Chief of Military History Quarterly and a regular contributor to World War II and WW II History magazines. Flint will talk about his book, The Depths of Courage, American Submariners at War with Japan, 1941-1945.
July 13 – TBD
July 27 – Rick Claggett was drafted into the Army from graduate school at Penn State in 1970. He volunteered to be a dog handler and served with a Scout Dog Infantry Unit while in Vietnam. Rick helped a Newberry Award winning author write a book about a Scout Dog in Vietnam called “Cracker, The Best Dog in Vietnam. ”
August 10 – Susan Cossitt will talk about the experiences of her father, Thomas Haney, as a turret and tail gunner on B-26 bombers during World War II in North Africa and the Mediterranean area. She draws on a lifetime of memories of her father and her father’s own words in the book she authored titled, “A Son of Philly in His Own Words.”
August 24 – Gary Sumner served in the U.S. Navy from 1970-1977 as an attack pilot and flight instructor. Among his deployments, his First Cruise in 1975 was off Viet Nam flying sorties for cover of the evacuation of Siagon. Later that month he flew sorties to recover the stolen merchant ship Mayaquez off Cambodia. Later in 1977, during a 9 month cruise, he flew 150 sorties during the Cold War involving up close encounters with several Soviet “Bear” long range bombers. Gary will incorporate his experiences in the Navy in his talk called “Freedom of the Seas,” a narrative of the importance of the control of the high seas.
September 14 – Ryan Woolf is a former Army officer and currently does leadership development consulting. He will give a presentation on leadership principles from a military history perspective, incorporating his experiences as a small unit leader in Afghanistan.