Don Gerken has his younger brother on his mind as Veterans Day approaches, and how his combat service in Vietnam — which earned him Silver and Bronze stars — left lasting scars.

“I think he brought a lot of that war home with him,” said Gerken, one of 17 military veterans gathered in the dining room of Seneca Hills Village in Penn Hills on Oct. 30. “But he straightened his life out later on.”

His brother, Larry, shook some bad habits and went on to get married and have two kids. He died in 2019 at age 73. Gerken, 90, also has lost his other brother, James.

All three had served in the Army. Gerken was stationed in the U.S., then Germany where he maintained artillery, before getting a final assignment at the now-defunct South Park Military Reservation in the Broughton area to be close to his ailing mother.

Other veterans at the independent living facility were thinking less about the personal than the political, like Bert Ewart, a Marine veteran who served from 1969 to 1971 at the Camp Lejeune military base in North Carolina.

With Election Day approaching at the time of his conversation with TribLive, Ewart was stewing over Republican candidate Donald Trump reportedly calling fallen Marines “suckers” and “losers” during a 2018 visit to an American cemetery near Paris.

“I don’t think you can brush off a comment like that,” he said. “I can’t give him any room.”

Linda Fleshman was thinking about just how much has changed since she joined the Navy in 1985, starting 21 years of service that also included time in the 1st Marine Division, the branch’s oldest and largest division.

Her dad, a Navy man of 20-plus years, had told her women would never end up on submarines.

In 2010, four years after Fleshman was discharged, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates lifted the ban on women serving on submarines.

She also was feeling grateful for her dog, Willy, a chihuahua-pit bull mix trained to help her with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“He doesn’t let people get too close to me,” she said, recommending a service dog to others in her situation.

Veterans Day will be observed Monday. In what has become an annual tradition, the facility’s choral group, the Seneca Hills Village Singers, plans to honor those who have served with songs of patriotism and hope for peace.

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