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Writer finds war conversations more obvious in Colorado's small towns, inner cities

Posted at 2:45 PM, Apr 15, 2018
and last updated 2018-04-16 11:19:32-04

DENVER – Donna Bryson was working as a journalist in Cairo when the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001 signally a turning point in the War on Terror.

Yet, when she moved to Denver a decade later she says it was hard to find anyone who was talking about the war. At least not in the metro area.

Donna Bryson will be taking part in a book talk on Tuesday, April 24 at 2 p.m. in Welcome Center conference room 105 at the Community College of Denver.  The talk is sponsored by the college's Veteran Services Coordinator.

“It seemed to me that people weren’t talking about it and it was a void I was curious about, wondering about,” the author of Home of the Brave told Anne Trujillo on this weekend’s Politics Unplugged

However, Bryson says she found people were talking about when she visited Montrose on Colorado’s western slope and talked to a fishing guide named Tim Kenney who had served in the military.

“I met him at his fishing shop and we drove out to his house and we drove by a house that had a flag out front and he said they just had someone, a marine, be deployed,” she recalled. “You don’t see that in Denver”

Bryson believes we don’t see that evidence in the landscape of people who have served because there are fewer from big cities like Denver.

“When I got to Montrose I seemed to come to this idea that in smaller towns in rural America, in troubled parts of America, so even in some inner city America, that’s where we’re finding the recruits for this war,” she said. “Many other Americans aren’t involved directly. They don’t know anyone who’s involved directly.  But in Montrose, people do.”

Donna Bryson will be taking part in a book talk on Tuesday, April 24 at 2 p.m. in Welcome Center conference room 105 at the Community College of Denver. The talk is sponsored by the college's Veteran Services Coordinator.

Politics Unplugged airs Sundays at 4:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Denver7.