A 'sanctuary' from trauma

FINDLAY — Classic rock and pop music will soar at the Fair Wednesday afternoon from the guitars of Hancock County veterans. They are among 104 who have graduated from "Guitars for Vets," which offers social and therapeutic benefits for vets who have suffered trauma. Upon graduation after completing lessons, the vets are awarded a guitar and gig bag. "It's been a life saver," said Ed Newton, a graduate of Guitars for Vets. "When you're feeling down, or when you're feeling up even, you can always count on that." "When I pick up the guitar and play, I can strum it, I feel a vibration," he said. "I sense the back of the guitar in my chest, and it brings me to my sanctuary." Shortly after graduating in 2019, Newton had a "life changing" experience while playing for the first time on stage in a band. "Midway through the song, the drums really started to kick in and the bass guitar kicked in and I could feel the vibration through my body and that was when I knew. It was just like, this is for me," Newton said. "The rush was just so incredible. It changed my life forever on that stage." Newton, who also is resiliency operations manager for the Veterans Service Office, sees the same impact on his fellow veterans. "We have people experiencing depression or anxiety or PTSD," he said. "Then they would get into the program and they would find that with the onset of the symptoms of those conditions, they could pick their guitar up and, the next thing you know, they're lost in the strings for a while and that helps them very much through those episodes." Bob Miller, coordinator of Guitars for Vets, said guitar playing has been "extremely" beneficial for him. "It lets me relax. Even when I make mistakes, everything is still good and everything is still perfect," Miller said. "It pulls me away from everything else. I don't have to worry about anything whatsoever." The benefits appear to be rooted in science. When playing a guitar or painting, it appears that one is engaging the right hemisphere of the brain more, said Paul Lilley, former coordinator of the Hancock County Chapter of Guitars for Veterans. Lilley worked for over 35 years in behavioral health treatment. Creativity is driven primarily by the right hemisphere in musicians who are comparatively inexperienced at improvisation, according to a 2020 study published in NeuroImage and funded by the National Science Foundation. There's still much mystery about how guitar playing benefits veterans. "We really don't know a lot about how the brain kind of works with this and the power that art, particularly, has," Lilley said. "What we have seen with veterans that have faced trauma is that music has offered a kind of sanctuary for those vets suffering from PTSD and other trauma-related areas." Lilley and Veterans Services Executive Director Nichole Coleman in 2019 persuaded the Veterans Administration to let Hancock County be the first guitar program in the nation which is unaffiliated with a VA facility. VA officials had required the guitar programs be tied to a VA facility in case a vet would be triggered into a mental health crisis, Coleman said. "So we put systems in place with first responders and our veterans response team and local social workers to navigate that and put together the flow chart that we could send to the national organization," she said. Now Hancock County's model is being replicated across the country by other communities located far from a VA facility. "We say it's all about the guitar, but it's really not," Lilley said. "It's really a vehicle for them to explore and express things that they might not be able to verbally or might not be able to at other hobbies, like golf." The guitar-playing veterans have regular get-togethers. They ply their craft, learning new songs together. They have fellowship. "We sit around and talk," Miller said. "We tell our stories here and there. Then we go home and do it again next month." "I pretty much introverted really bad when I moved back to Findlay. I literally did not go out and did nothing," Miller said. "This actually drew me out a little bit more." "Even without the guitar, the program itself is really helpful and therapeutic," he said. Now he teaches guitar-playing to other veterans. "It's payback, pay forward, 100%. I love watching brand new students coming in that don't know anything," Miller said. "When they come out, they're playing a song. You know what they're playing. It sounds right. They're happy as can be. They've got this cute smile on their face." "It's just a great feeling because it's good for somebody and passing it on," Miller said. "It's more than just about the guitar," Newton said. "It's about all the graduates are together and getting back into that camaraderie, communicating with other veterans through music, through the guitar."