New home, same name for Danielson vet coffeehouse group

PUTNAM — It’s a new location, but the same moniker for a popular local veterans’ coffeehouse group.

After years of looking for a permanent home, the Danielson Veterans Coffeehouse held its first weekly meeting on Oct. 27 at the Putnam Elks Lodge 574 on Edmond Street, a facility that leaders said meets the spacing, parking and accessibility needs of its members for the foreseeable future.

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The group was formed 2015 under the auspices of the Thames Valley Council for Community Action, or TVCCA’s, Retired and Senior Volunteer Program. But as more and more former service members showed up regularly at the Killingly Community Center on Broad Street, the monthly meetings expanded to weekly ones and the group became autonomous.

Since its inception, similar coffeehouses have formed across the state, including in Plainfield, Norwich and Groton.

But spacing and other issues continued to plague the original Killingly meeting space. A lack of adequate air conditioning forced members to meet at the St. John Lutheran Church in Danielson during the summer months and parking was always a concern.

Then COVID-19 and its related social distancing strictures hit, making the community center a difficult sell to the group’s core demographic: Older and with underlying medical conditions.

“We were splitting the group into two rooms to maintain proper distancing with a television in a secondary room to allow people to see what was happening in the main room,” coffeehouse President Fred Ruhlemann said.

An unrelated conversation with Putnam Elks leaders led to the offer of a new space in the one-story lodge.

“Call it religious, fate or destiny, but it came together very quickly,” Ruhlemann said.

Jim Eccleston, the esteemed leading Knight at the Putnam lodge, said one of the group’s “guiding purposes” is to honor and support all American veterans. 

“The lodge’s veterans committee has partnered with the coffeehouse to ensure that the veterans of our area have a place to meet and that the needs of the veterans on a local and state level can be addressed,” he said, in an email. “It is the hope of this partnership that we can advocate locally and on a state level to keep veterans' needs in the forefront.”

The lodge boasts a large enough meeting room to accommodate the incoming veterans with proper 6-feet spacing, as well as handicap access, a kitchen and a cooling system that will allow for year-round meetings.

Ruhlemann said moving the group out of its namesake village wasn’t a step taken lightly.

“We’ve been looking for a home for several years and I couldn’t find the right place anywhere in Danielson — we didn’t want to leave,” he said. “The Putnam Elks wanted to make sure they weren’t poaching on the Danielson Elks, but that spot wasn’t handicapped accessible.”

Ruhlemann said pre-COVID-19, the group would regularly attract more than 50 members to each meeting, more during certain events. He said the pandemic shrunk attendance to the high 30s.

“We’ve got a lot of older members with medical conditions that range from heart disease to cancer and some are concerned about being out in a group,” he said. “We are taking the precautions seriously with distancing and face masks required. At our first meeting in Putnam last week, about 38 people showed up.”

Despite the move, Ruhlemann said the Danielson group will retain its original name.

“We’ll always be the Danielson Veterans Coffeehouse,” he said.

At a glance

What: Danielson Veterans Coffeehouse meetings

When: 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. every Tuesday

Where: Putnam Elks Lodge 574, 64 Edmond St., Putnam