WHO WE ARE

Co-Founder, Board Member

  Co-Founding VNEW was my way of fulfilling my mother Virginia Passaggio’s wish to help veterans. It was her wish for as long as I can remember. My grandfather, John Dolan, and my father, Charles Passaggio, both served in the military. My mother grew up in dysfunctional family due to PTSD. They called it back then “shell shock”, and veterans just lived with it. Her request for me to help veterans came from a deep belief that these men and women do not get enough credit and support for the service they give us. She passed in 2016, and Ted Post, Kandi Reyes and I put the wheels in motion to fulfill this promise. While looking through boxes upon my mother’s passing, I found my grandfather’s compass. He used that compass in World War I to get back to his camp from the trenches. I also found my grandfather’s harmonica. His harmonica was very important to him because he used music to calm his anxiety and demons. Many veterans use music as a form of healing and expression. It became crystal clear that the organization we would found would include music, arts, dance, theater, film, painting, writing as sources of healing and hope for veterans and their families. And that is how VNEW was founded.

Co-Founder

 

Ted Post (1918 – 2013) shared the same vision as Dennis Passaggio and Kandi Reyes and played a crucial role in the founding of VNEW. Mr. Post was a prolific film and television director who collaborated with Clint Eastwood on two hit features “Hang ‘Em High” and Magnum Force”. He directed hundreds of television series episodes including “Gunsmoke,” “Peyton Place” and “Rawhide”, and his other features included “Beneath The Planet of The Apes”, “The Harrod Experiment” and the highly regarded Viet Nam war film “Go Tell The Spartans”.

Much of Mr. Post’s early experience came during World War II where he served in the Army directing theater and musical productions for troops stationed in Europe. He witnessed firsthand how music, drama and performance helped veterans tell their stories and cope with their pains and concerns. He believed strongly that more needed to be done to honor our returning soldiers and that music and the arts would be a powerful tool for that support.