U.S. Navy veteran John Hollenback is 85.
"If I live until December, I'll be 86," he said with a gentle wink.
The Carbondale native has packed a full life into those years.
He served aboard two Navy cruisers patrolling the Mediterranean Sea during a 1958 crisis in Lebanon. For that service, he received a National Defense Service Medal and the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal.
Of course, there is more to the man who was honorably discharged a few years later and received the Navy Good Conduct Medal.
He and his father used to go fishing on Dyberry Creek. He was a paperboy and later worked as an usher at the Irving Theater in Carbondale.
He loves Frank Sinatra’s music — really loves it. While working in the shipping department at a local nursing home, Hollenback would sing the crooner's songs for residents. Once he and wife Nancy were "within distance of shaking Frank's hand" during a concert in New Jersey, where they lived for many years.
But the heart of Hollenback's story is Nancy, to whom he was married for over a half century, until she died in 2019.
“She was unique. She was the best woman for me.”
We can share these deeply personal details thanks entirely to the work of two University of Scranton students who interviewed Hollenback several times this semester at the Gino J. Merli Veterans Center in downtown Scranton, where he lives.
“I just love connecting with older people,” said Dermot Alvidrez, who interviewed Hollenback alongside classmate Daniel Bohenek for Kim Pavlick’s COM224 Media Writing course.
"I think it's awesome to hear their stories and get their wisdom, and especially from a veteran like John, who obviously has a wealth of experience,” Alvidrez said.
'Community-based learning'
COM224 students gathered with veterans at the center Thursday afternoon to present the fruits of their labors: two printed biographies per veteran — one from each of the students they were paired with — and digital versions of the interviews on thumb drives, for the veterans and their families to save for posterity.
The reports have even been used by some families in preparing memorial tributes for loved ones who have passed, Pavlick said.
That's not surprising: Pavlick said students often elicit details from the veterans which even their families did not know.
“Sometimes I think it's easier as a human to tell your story to a stranger than it is to someone you could possibly be burdening, or that person would look at you in a different way,” Pavlick said.
“They're different faces,” she said of the students.
This is the third year for the project, which is a teaching tool for students and the community at large.
Pavlick partners with nonprofit community organization Scranton Tomorrow, which will display the reports for the group's monthly First Friday event in November ahead of Veterans Day.
The reports also will be archived as part of the Scranton Stories Oral History Project at the University of Scranton, which is how the class project originally began, Pavlick said.
"This is a community-based learning project," she said. "People drive by this building all day, every day, and don't know who lives here, and there are heroes in this building."
Gino J. Merli Veterans Center Commandant Vito P. Ruggiero said the state-owned center can house up to 196 residents, including a 20-bed unit for women.
"To care for a veteran in any capacity is truly humbling," Ruggiero told the students. "This doesn't mean that you need to take a blood pressure or give a medication. What each of you did provided, in some regards, more care than you can possibly imagine."
Over the past three years, students in the classes have interviewed a spy who passed messages during the Cold War, a 103-year-old World War II veteran, Korea veterans, Vietnam and Vietnam-era veterans, Pavlick said.
"I can attest that the time you took to speak, share stories, but most importantly, to listen, put smiles on a lot of faces," Ruggiero said during Thursday's gathering. "I know this because I see it every day I walk through our doors."
For veterans who may or may not receive regular visitors, the students' presence is a welcome one.
"I got an email from a participant's wife who told me that he gets very excited his Scranton friends are coming, and the staff here says they look forward to the kids coming down," Pavlick said.
Jacqueline Murphy, a therapeutic activities aide at the center for over three years, assisted with Thursday's event. She enjoys reading the finished projects.
"It's interesting to learn someone's background and story, and how they served, how they ended up being in a community with us," Murphy said. "And it's interesting to see the young people taking an interest."
The staff's assistance is crucial: They help connect the students with family members, where possible, to provide photos, artifacts and background. This is important in cases where the veterans may need help telling their own stories.
"A lot of residents have dementia or Alzheimer's, and they can't share their stories with us. So it's nice to see (with) the ones who can what they've been through and where they were stationed and what their experiences were," Murphy said.
'We have the greatest assignments'
The COM224 course, which is under the university's Department of Communication and Media, focuses on content creation. The veterans assignment teaches students interviewing skills, fact checking, writing skills and multimedia skills, Pavlick said.
It occasionally draws juniors and seniors, but the course is mostly filled with sophomores, she said, and typically fills up quickly.
Those eager students are not limited to future journalists.
"There are actually only six students out of the 18 who are studying journalism," Pavlick said of the current cohort. "The other 12 wanted to participate in this project."
“And our students are just so genuine," she said. "The kids who take this class to do this project have huge hearts. The students love hearing the stories and preserving them."
Alvidrez, who is from New Jersey, is studying broadcasting and hopes to become a sports journalist.
He was interested in the class because of the veterans project, but also because he had a favorable view of Pavlick's teaching style.
"I know Dr. P, so I know the kind of ship that she runs," Alvidrez said. "And I know that it's going to be a lot of work, but we have the greatest assignments in Dr. P's classes."
Alvidrez and Bohenek, who is from Scranton, interviewed Hollenback twice with their classmates and twice outside of class.
"I think it's a great way of getting to know someone and then also preserving their story over time," Bohenek said of the assignment. "I think it's a good way of just having them have a good feeling and getting their family to know them in a way they didn't think they could before."
'How important human connection can be'
What did the students learn? Alvidrez paused to think about the question.
There was a basic historical lesson: He had not heard of the 1958 Lebanon crisis, in which U.S. Marines, backed up by dozens of warships, landed in Beirut at the Lebanese government's request amid rising sectarian tensions in the Middle East nation.
"They were in the Atlantic, South America, and they got called into the Mediterranean," Alvidrez said of Hollenback and his crewmates.
Hollenback recounted the deployment bluntly in his interview with the students.
“You know, they called us up and said, ‘Get your asses over to Beirut, we’ve got a situation,’” Hollenback said. “We got back out to sea and patrolled around Beirut until the disturbances subsided.”
But the lessons for Alvidrez went much deeper than a long-ago military engagement.
He learned about Hollenback's youth when his father, Raymond, had supported his decision to enlist in the Navy after high school, though his mother, Edna, had reservations. Eventually, Alvidrez learned, she "came around," feeling the experience would be best for her son.
"To me, they were the greatest parents in the world," Hollenback told Alvidrez.
He also learned about Holleback's post-military work and family life — particularly about his wife Nancy, and his son Patrick, who lives in New Jersey.
There also were practical lessons: How to confirm details and fill in the parts of a story where human memories grow dim. With Hollenback, for example, that meant looking up his wife's obituary to confirm dates and biographical details, Pavlick said.
But Hollenback's deep love for his wife was a frequent theme in their interviews, and it left an impression on Alvidrez.
"I think it really reinforced to me how important human connection can be to somebody," he said. "I learned from John that the best experiences that you can have in life are with the connections you make with other people."
The feeling was mutual.
"These guys were absolutely awesome to me. Yes, they were, and I'm very proud of them both," Hollenback said of Alvidrez and Bohenek.
