Creative Forces: Healing through Writing and the Arts

Inspired by our current exhibition, The Great War & Southampton, the Southampton History Museum is honored to host a panel discussion on the role of writing and the arts as healing practices for soldiers in the past and present.

Our panelists include:

John Melillo: East End visual artist and disabled Vietnam Veteran who uses painting as a solace and healing mechanism.

T.R. Hendricks: Author, former US Army Captain/military intelligence officer, and Iraq Veteran who uses writing as a solace and healing mechanism.

Dr. Daniel Van Arsdale: Director of Medical Education and Site Designated Institutional Official at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, he practices neuromusculoskeletal, family, and hospice and palliative care medicine. Dr. Van Arsdale is an Iraq Veteran who served as a Field Surgeon with the 42nd Infantry Division.

Steven Gould: Co-Curator and Research Associate, Southampton History Museum

Sarah Kautz (moderator): Co-Curator and Executive Director, Southampton History Museum

Come early to visit The Great War & Southampton with co-curator Timothy Van Wickler, our Director of Programs & Operations and US Army Aviation Operations Sergeant, who will be in the Rogers Mansion gallery to answer your questions. Learn more about the extraordinary objects on display, such as the journal of WWI nurse Charity Bennett Schulte (1890–1971), who later worked at Southampton Hospital. A graduate of Temple University’s nursing school, she served in the US Army Nurse Corps during WWI at Military Hospital No. 1 outside Paris, where she met her future husband, George A. Schulte (1895–1942), a native of Sag Harbor who was gassed and shot in the trenches. Charity’s remarkable journal was inscribed by George and other wounded soldiers she treated in France with drawings, handwritten messages, and accounts of how they were injured. Don’t miss this very special object and exhibition!