Thursday, May 6, 2010

Reading at the VA



My cousin, Amy Kelley, is a therapist at the VA Hospital here in Amarillo. She asked if I would come and do a reading from my new book of collected short works entitled "On The Road Home" from Port Yonder Press. I was happy to do so.

Had a nice group including a guy that just turned 101 and another who at 96 has several books in print, primarily poetry, that he is understandably proud of. I picked a couple of short stories that had sort of a military theme with my usual surprise endings, and a couple of western oriented ones. They seemed to prefer the westerns.

I put a couple of them to sleep, of course, but my cousin says that is to be expected. Reading aloud will put my mom to sleep immediately too.

I enjoyed watching Amy work. She is so VERY good with these old guys (even older than me)and they obviously think the world of her. She has such patience, such a loving tone, yet is firm enough that they will do as she asks. She's a natural.

It was a nice outing, and I enjoyed doing it.

2 comments:

Amy Kelley said...

Thanks for coming Terry, as soon as you left, I had a few guys from the reading just brag on how much they enjoyed that. They don't get to hear much of story telling, especially westerns. I could tell they really liked the western part. Terry it was a wonderful time, and thank you for the very nice comments. We would love to have you again soon. I really liked the part when you named the donkey in your story "little bit" that was cute :)

Linda Glaz said...

What an amazing ministry to those guys. Thanks for supporting our troops, Terry.