♪♪ - He served his country in Vietnam and now he's serving his fellow vets in Delaware.

- The part that I volunteer for is called escort duty.

- And see how this program is meeting the needs of women veterans.

- When I left the military, there was no place like this.

- Plus the transformative power of art as a healing tool for veterans.

Finding people that become support systems, lifelong friends.

Hi there, thanks for tuning in.

Our show tonight is about the services and programs in our region that support our veterans.

This first story is about how local veterans and active duty military members are discovering the power of connection and creativity through the art of glass making.

Inside the glass studio at Wheaton Arts in Millville, New Jersey, a region with deep glass making roots, the orange glow of molten glass is hypnotic.

It's here that about 25 veterans recently took part in a hands-on program called Glass Art for Military Wellness in partnership with Rowan University's George Family Center for Healing Arts.

We have a fairly long history with offering programs for veterans and active duty military.

We came up with the concept of a series of artistic workshops for veterans and active duty military personnel.

This program allowed them to experience glass in a variety of ways.

They were able to do stained glass, glass painting, glass fusing, and of course hot glass because everybody loves to blow glass.

The veterans would come here.

Most workshops were a two-day workshop, so they would come on day one, get a taste for it, and then the next day they would come and finish up their projects.

For Navy veteran Christopher Churylo, the workshops were about more than learning glass.

Coming out of a fight with bladder cancer, Chris was looking for a connection, to rejoin the community and to be back with fellow service members.

I think that a lot of times when you isolate yourself, you forget there are people out there who care.

Because when you're spending your time in the military, it's definitely a different environment.

There is a bond and it's just different being around veterans when you get to share time with them.

This kind of camaraderie is harder to find among today's veterans.

Considering PTSD occurs more commonly among veterans than civilians, and that veteran suicides remain a persistent problem, the potential impact of programs like this go well beyond what's happening in the studio.

Art is a healthy behavior.

Art is good for your health.

It's something that can help with the healing process.

Finding people that become support systems, lifelong friends, I mean, that's sort of what we're trying to like breed here.

And it's working.

- While Pam and Morgan work to keep the program going, the glass art created over the course of these four free workshops will be on display starting on Veterans Day.

- The actual objects that were created will be on display at Inspira Medical Center in Vineland.

Everybody will be able to see and appreciate this program and see how the arts can be such a valuable tool for health and well-being.

- Every year, Wheaton Arts holds a Veterans Day glassmaking program for service members, as well as other amazing events and workshops for the public.

And while I was there, I had the opportunity to make this paperweight.

So big thanks to Glass Studio manager Katie Murphy, who guided me through the process.

Heroic Gardens, a mental health organization, is showing veterans how gardening can lead to healing.

Today we are going to plant oxalis.

It is a purple clover and it is the symbol of Heroic Gardens.

It has come to represent not only Mission Windowsill but our virtual garden as well.

We are going to be writing on our pots the things that we are most grateful for.

And then we are going to plant three corms, which are little fruit pieces of this oxalis, to represent things that we were grateful for in the past, the present and the future.

I'm thankful for the Heroic Gardens They've allowed me or enabled me to be here with you.

The veterans that speak to me about this program love it.

And they love it because it gives them a connection with other veterans that they may not have had.

I've been very successful, lucky in my work life where I've had a job for my entire life since I got out of the Navy.

Many veterans have not been as lucky whether they have additional physical disabilities that prevent them from working.

They're shut in, they're alone.

This offers an opportunity for me to share with veterans that if you go outside, you can feel pretty good and we can have a good time together and you can learn something and you can actually now have something you have to take care of and you're responsible for.

It just makes you feel good when you're doing this stuff yourself.

I was in the Navy in 1977 to 1981.

It was certainly a different time in the military back then compared to perhaps now.

And quite honestly, it was not a very pleasant experience for many individuals.

There was occasions and occurrences of hazing, drug abuse.

But there's all kinds of different things similar to what other veterans have experienced during their active duty period.

I got out of the Navy and had a family and didn't really connect with veterans or veterans organizations for quite a long time.

Veterans Day Parade about five years ago, I marched and the Heroic Gardens had a vendor booth.

I was interested in learning more about nature.

Working with soil is very therapeutic.

Everybody get to see.

My name is Baylee Carr.

My role at the Vet Center through Heroic Gardens is that I'm studying to become a registered horticultural therapist.

A horticultural therapist uses nature and nature crafts, gardening to bring coping skills, emotional healing, skill building, social activity for people looking to gain those kinds of things from it.

Heroic Gardens works with veterans and their families to provide these healing areas.

We do projects like the Sunflower Farm at Pennypack Park.

We go to veterans homes and provide raised beds for them.

We run these sessions where we come in and for an hour we do either a gardening craft or a nature craft.

Not only do plants provide us with oxygen, but there are scientific studies that show that we associate the color green with happiness.

Working with soil itself, there are microbiomes in the soil that interact with our skin and provide us with all of these happy endorphins.

On top of all of that, it gives us something to nurture and take care of.

The thing about plants that heals anyone is that it brings us back to our natural state.

We get to become one with nature.

This tattoo is my connection between Heroic Gardens and the military community.

Each one of these flowers represents something different in military symbolism.

One of the phrases heroic gardens utilizes, let freedom boom, peace, love and plans.

There are more than 2 million female veterans in the U.S.

They are the fastest growing group in the military and the veteran population.

They also face unique challenges and needs which are addressed in our next story.

Women veterans who come in looking for services are veterans that have fallen on hard times and who also don't necessarily see themselves as veterans.

When I left the military, there was no place like this.

And for a good while, I was lost.

It was this place that helped me get back on my feet.

What we're doing at Veterans Multi-Service Center is recognizing the unique needs and challenges that women veterans face so that they can get services and the comfort here at the Women's Vet Center.

We want people to understand that the women veteran population is growing exponentially.

Veterans that come in through the VMC, one in four are women veterans.

The Women's Center provides that safe haven for women specifically where women can come and feel comfortable.

They have clothes here, showers.

You get a meal there, you are able to do your laundry.

TV, they have activities every week and get help with services for whatever that they might need.

Their mothers, their caregivers.

That's why we need a place like this to service women veterans in this community.

Recently studies are showing that women veterans is the fastest growing demographic in the homeless population.

What we're doing at Veterans Multi-Service Center is we provide housing support and we have employment support.

We bring case managers, we offer trainings, we offer some different social opportunities as well for the veterans to get connected.

The other thing that has some concerns is that over the last two to three years, the suicide rates for women veterans has increased 25%.

But we also have SSG Fox case managers, which is our suicide prevention and awareness for crisis response, will meet our women veterans here and do some interventions to provide that level of support, which also includes, and we've been seeing an increase in domestic violence rates.

We've had to provide some intervention services for them, and there's been many that have come in fleeing domestic violence from other states.

VMC helped me get transitional housing, and from that point I was able to get permanent housing.

Just establish connections, be able to give back and also receive.

I consider myself one of the greeters here, so when we get new incoming women vets, I extend a hand to them.

And I, along with another female vet, we sort through the donations of clothing.

Whatever is needed, I'm here to render my service.

♪♪ - They're looking for shelter, benefits, food, clothing, which we have all available to them here, and just looking for somewhere to start to get them back on their feet.

This place gave me an opportunity to find friendships.

And I love the camaraderie that we have.

I love the group chats that we have.

I love building these bonds and sharing our experiences that we've had during our time in the service and outside.

It's very special.

If you are a woman veteran or you know of a woman veteran, please reach out either on their behalf or reach out yourself.

It is so important to get connected with these services and these benefits that you have earned.

I'm really honored to be able to provide and continue to provide help.

When a Delaware man returned home from the Vietnam War, he wanted to serve his fellow service members.

Now he's one of many veterans who volunteer at the VA hospital in Delaware.

- My name's Jim Whittaker.

I am a volunteer here at the VA hospital.

This place, the VA at Ellesmere, beautiful, large hospital, it's been here since 1948.

The part that I volunteer for is called escort duty, and that's actually making contact with veterans.

I'm Jim, but you can call me Lieutenant Jim.

There are inpatients and also from just the ER, they come in and we take them from one place to the next.

They have a wonderful volunteer organization with over 200 volunteers and a staff of three full-time employees to run the program.

So I have a standard line with them.

I'll ask them what service they were in.

You were in 71?

We love to banter in the military.

We love to kid each other about what service they might be in versus what service I might have been in.

We cleaned up a lot of your messes, you know.

In Vietnam, I ended up being an infantry platoon leader responsible for 30 or 40 young, sometimes 18-year-old draftees, trying to keep them alive for a full year.

When they sent me overseas, I was in the 1st Cavalry Division, which was heavily involved in all sorts of combat because we were using helicopters that could get you to the fight real fast.

It totally changed my life in terms of the outlook and the things that I value and are important by virtue of being an officer in the army and also an officer in the infantry.

I had a little bit of survivor's guilt when I came back and I wanted to volunteer so I came here shortly thereafter to volunteer.

If I can to talk and interact and exchange views and maybe get them to smile, I consider that a successful run and it really makes me feel good.

If I can get them to laugh, that's icing on the cake.

So that's what gives me joy and a reward for coming here.

- We turn back the clock to a story we've been following for some time now.

It's called the Veterans Watchmaker Initiative.

It's a program that gives disabled veterans a skill and purpose for the future.

In demand, close to 20 graduates.

Veterans rebuilding their lives.

Veterans Watchmaker Initiative is the only technical school in the country that trains disabled veterans exclusively as watchmakers.

Veterans Watchmaker Initiative, or VWI, opened its doors in 2017 here in Odessa, Delaware.

Watchmaking is a highly skilled, very intricate trade.

It's difficult to learn.

You may have anywhere from 110 to 150 pieces and parts.

Knowing what you're looking at, how to integrate these parts back into the movement, and ultimately get it running so it keeps time.

It's the only watchmaking school in the country exclusively for veterans.

Largely funded through private grants and donations, the school is totally free and also offers housing.

VWI continues what the Bulova company started after World War II in Queens, New York.

While Bulova trained a whole generation of watchmakers in their time, now VWI founder Sam Cannan is training the next.

When they ultimately closed, we picked up the mantle and that's been now 14 years we've been doing this, seven years in this location.

They need thousands of watchmakers just in this country, globally tens of thousands.

The need is such that luxury watch companies are courting students like Eric Preciado while he's still in the course.

I've never had someone come to me and say, hey, I want you to work for me.

I've always been the one to go out and look for a job.

And when someone caters to you and courts you and wants you to be a part of their family, that hits different.

I would equate it to getting a ticket for the lottery, but knowing I'm going to win.

The Navy Corpsman was in a bad place prior to coming to BWI.

Injured from his time in the service and on the job afterwards, Eric contemplated suicide.

And at his darkest hour, Eric says, this watch his wife gave him saved his life.

I don't know where I would be if it wasn't for that watch and for her.

I was sitting there in the dark in my room and I was like, man, I want to know what's going on under that watch, though.

Let me just try to open it.

I tried to open it, couldn't figure it out.

I remember thinking to myself, maybe I can look something up online and see if I can find something.

What he found was BWI.

And now he's on the same path as Jason Adams.

We first met the Army veterans six years ago.

Jason was injured in Iraq.

He suffered a traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and a host of other issues.

He was in Sam's very first class.

Now he works for a high-end watch shop in New York and makes it a point to come back to BWI every year.

That's what also makes it so important for me to come back to the school to talk to them is I want to know that it's real, it's out there, the opportunities is endless.

Doing these types of things I think puts this confidence in yourself that you can do it.

It provides me with a purpose and it's something I love.

Doing the watches also helped with the PTSD because being inside a watch, it uses so much mental capacity that you kind of forget about the other things in your life.

The ones I get, generally they're kind of at the end.

They've used their benefits or whatever and they just don't fit in.

Nothing seems to work for them.

They're kind of in this position where they're okay but they're not really okay.

And they stumble on this little program here and they find themselves among people that are just like they are.

So suddenly their whole world changes.

This is more of like a rehabilitation center for veterans that need help.

That need to restructure their life.

That need some form of direction, right?

Because I didn't have any of that.

This program has given me so much without me giving anything.

I mean, I understand I served in the military and I did something for my country and that's why the program does what it does.

But I still feel like I owe it.

This is one skill set, once you're trained to do it, no one can take it away from you.

As we near the 250th anniversary of America's birth, we learn about the men who fought for and against our country's freedom.

Arts and Culture reporter Peter Crimmins and videographer Emma Lee from the WHYY News Digital Studio bring us the story of the Battle of Brandywine.

The Battle of Brandywine was one of the largest, definitely the longest, and probably the loudest battle of the entire Revolutionary War.

It was a great defeat for George Washington, but for many Americans it was a great victory.

There were about 500 colonists fighting on the side of the British.

They were loyalists.

The Revolutionary War was, in many senses, a civil war.

But why was it a good idea for a loyalist to be a loyalist at the time?

Being a loyalist, you know what you have.

You're an English subject.

You have rules.

You have laws.

You wanted to keep those.

When you see a Continental soldier come and lead your cows away, that's going to make you think twice about who you want to side up with.

We had a most extensive view of the American Army, and we saw our comrades cutting them up in great style.

This is Stephen Jarvis.

He actually started in a patriot militia in Connecticut.

But by the time Brandywine happened, he had joined the Loyalists.

He later wrote in his memoir he was more than happy to take a bullet for the king.

My pantaloons received a wound, and I won't hesitate to say I was pleased to see some blood.

This is James Parker.

Originally he was opposed to England, especially when they had taxes and policies that were antithetical to the colonists.

But he never wanted to sever from the crown.

And when the Declaration of Independence was released in 1776, that's what broke him.

And he became a loyalist.

So during the Battle of Brandywine, Parker got close enough to Washington that he actually had a shot at him.

He really wanted Washington dead.

My prayers went with the ball that it might finish Washington and the rebellion altogether.

So William Shoemaker fought as a patriot at the Battle of Brandywine.

But over the course of the war, he actually bounced back and forth between the armies several times.

Shoemaker deserted the Continental Army somewhere in Bucks County and joined a loyalist troop.

And then later he was captured by the Continental Army and worked on a covert mission to steal supplies from the British in New York.

And then he was captured again by the British Army and he served out the rest of the war.

He fought at the Battle of Springfield where he actually fired on the same Continental soldiers that he stood side-by-side with a few weeks earlier.

If it's been a while since you've had food, if you've had clothing, if you've had shelter, you look at the other side who has those things.

All right, well I'm gonna go over there then.

The fighting of the Battle of Brandywine came here to the doorstep of the Birmingham Meeting House.

They fought here, they died here, and they were buried where they fell.

This is a mass grave.

This is where British and patriot and loyalists, people who are trying their best to kill each other now lay buried side by side.

>> Finally tonight, movie critic Patrick Stoner talks to the stars of Ballad of a Small Player.

>> How do you like it?

How do you like it?

Ma-ma-ma-ma How do you like it?

How do you like it?

Ma-ma-ma-ma Yeah!

In Ballad of a Small Player, Colin Farrell plays a conman who is coming unglued in the wild casinos of Macao Fala Chen as a co-star but Colin himself has come a long way from early addictions to critical acclaim as an actor now.

I've talked to him about it.

I've been interviewing you for gosh so many years.

Yeah.

Before the hair was even white.

Your talent was always obvious.

But in those days I hope this guy doesn't burn himself out.

To see what you've now done recently in the last several years it's been reassuring.

To what extent can you draw on that earlier intense guy?

It's great to see you, man.

Thanks for your kind words.

It's really lovely to see you.

Yeah, we've been talking to each other for 25 years.

Like, I think I was interviewed by him for "Tigerland" going way back.

It's been so long since I made a very dramatic change in my life at a certain moment that I had to make and that I was fortunate enough to be able to make.

You know, every aspect of everything you've gone through as an actor finds its way.

Some things you've gone through get quietened down.

Some things you've gone through get amplified up, but you're always bringing the kind of panoply of your whole life experience mixed with your imagination to each job and to each script.

And he's close to, he's close to, he certainly hits a rock bottom.

I certainly hit a rock bottom in about 2005, and this guy is in the process of really landing with a very hard thud.

- There's not just Colin who was a co-star with you.

Macao itself, that whole weird world is a character as well, was it not?

I think, yeah, you're absolutely right.

And I think our director, Edward Berger, also saw that.

The gambling strip and the casinos are certainly kind of like a breathing beast that is also like a hungry ghost that actually is like moving.

I always feel like somehow, am I dizzy when we're watching the film?

It's like something's always moving in motion.

Almost like it's assaulting you.

Yeah, it is assaulting your senses, but it's also like assaulting your sense of, your desire and your, it's kind of calling you.

It's like, you know, you could play one more hand.

As much as, you know, his character also does that to himself in a way too, but that, yeah, the casinos are a very interesting place to film in, difficult, technically, our producers spend so much time and logistics to make that work.

And it's, you know, dazzling on the screen.

So, yeah, fascinating.

- It's nice to meet you, Fala and Colin.

- Nice to meet you.

- Brother, it's so good to see you, man.

I look forward to seeing you again.

- Thank you.

- Okay, that is our show.

A big thank you to all of our veterans and service members.

Have a good night, everyone.

♪♪