Vietnam Veteran Writes It Out

By Melissa Vitiello

“There are no words here / to witness why we fought, / who sent us or what we hoped to gain,” Gerald McCarthy wrote of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. in his poem The hooded legion. A professor of English at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill, New York, McCarthy offers, along with fellow writers and veterans Jan Barry and Michael Gillen, a Writing Workshop for Military Veterans and Family Members, which provides a literary outlet for those whose lives have been shaped by war. McCarthy is a committed anti-war activist, and has engaged in actions by Vets for Peace and Vietnam Veterans against the War.

Gerald McCarthy was born in Endicott, New York, as the oldest son of an Italian mother and Irish-American father. He currently lives with his wife Michele and their three sons in South Nyack, New York. McCarthy is the author of War Story (The Crossing Press, 1977), Shoetown (Cloverdale Library, 1992), as well as his latest publication, Trouble Light (West End Press, 2008). His poetry, fiction and criticism have been published in New Letters, Poet Lore, Nimrod, Unaccustomed Mercy: Soldier Poets of the Vietnam War, A New Geography of Poets, as well as several other anthologies and magazines.

Moreover, McCarthy currently teaches an ongoing series of workshops with elementary school students at Blue Rock School in West Nyack, New York, as well as advising workshops with senior citizens at Thorpe Senior Center in Sparkill, New York. McCarthy is the recipient of awards from the National Writers Union and The New York State Council on the Arts, and has been a visiting artist twice at The American Academy in Rome. Every summer McCarthy directs a writing workshop in Tuscany, Italy, with writers Colette Inez and Lynn Lauber.

“I admire how Gerry has dedicated his life to teaching writing to a wide variety of people of all ages and to writing poems about life around him, as he was growing up and as he grows older, warts and all,” said Jan Barry, professor of journalism at St. Thomas Aquinas College.

At age seventeen, McCarthy left home to join the Marines and served a tour of duty in Vietnam. While serving in Vietnam from 1966-67, McCarthy unloaded cargo from ships with the 1st Marines, where afterwards he was transferred to the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion in Chu Lai and then Danang. After McCarthy was released from military prison and civilian jail, he pursued the roles of a stone cutter, a shoe factory worker, as well as an anti-war activist before he attended The Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. Soon after, McCarthy enrolled at SUNY Geneseo where he studied with poet Dave Kelly. McCarthy has taught workshops in schools, colleges, migrant labor camps, and Attica Prison.

Barbra Yontz, professor of art at St. Thomas Aquinas College, recalled her first memory of McCarthy at a “College Day” meeting. Individuals were being singled out for reasons such as tenure or being a new addition to the college faculty, but McCarthy was singled out because of a book of poetry he had written. Yontz said that his recognition “made me take notice and I vowed to know more about him.”

“Over the years I have read his poems, seen his effect on students, and witnessed the ways he weaves together the beauty and power of lived experience in his work with his teaching. It is as though stitching together public and personal events through time comes naturally to Professor McCarthy….but then that is the mark of the most well crafted and gifted art. It seems effortless, when in fact it’s not. We are all lifted by his presence at STAC and as a colleague, I am inspired and proud to be even loosely associated with him,” said Yontz.

The Writing Workshop for Military Veterans and Family Members is held the first Tuesday of each month at 8 p.m. at the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) at 521 N. Broadway, Upper Nyack, New York. For more information contact Gerald McCarthy at gmccarth@stac.edu or 845-570-1410 (cell) or 845-398-4134 (office).