Chris Farlekas and his calling

Photo found at www.current.com

The brain child of writer, storyteller, educator, and arts advocate Chris Farlekas, the Council and Hall of Honor are working with Farlekas on the creation of a play, a series of vignettes, narratives and anecdotes based on the stories of those veterans from these recent conflicts.

Farlekas, who created a similar program in the late 60’s and early 70’s that travelled throughout the region telling the stories of returning Viet Nam War veterans, this is something he feels he needs to do.“No one is listening to these men and women coming home today from overseas,” he states, “and they need to be heard.” Farlekas approached the Arts Council because of our Arts for Vets Program, and we contacted the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor who we actually work closely with. The National Purple Heart Hall of Honor records the history of Purple Heart recipient accounts through filming their personal stories.

Chris is a tremendous writer, a former vet himself, and completely dedicated to the causes of these returning veterans. We feel if anyone can pull this project together, he can. Anita Pidala, Director of the Hall of Honor, is helping to gather information from veterans with which she has already worked. We hope to put the pieces together by late fall with performances beginning after that with the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor being one of the venues for presentations.

The Orange County Arts Council and the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor are collaborating on a program that will tell the stories of the men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. In order to start the project, the Arts Council is asking for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to send in their chronicles of either preparing to go, while they were there, or coming home. These accounts can be poignant, funny, hopeful, sad, terrifying or joyous.