New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Yamaha President Tom Sumner (second from left) joins Guitars for Vets Co-Founder Patrick Nettesheim (far right) and G4V graduate veterans on stage.
"It's a small measure of appreciation, but it's richly deserved, and if it makes a veteran's life more bearable we'll gladly step up," said Tom Sumner, president, Yamaha Corporation of America.
Yamaha joined veteran's group Guitars for Vets (G4V) this evening to hold a live music performance in Nashville to highlight
National PTSD Awareness Day, as well as G4V's program of rehabilitation from post-traumatic stress disorder through music.
Students and graduates of the G4V program's Nashville chapter made up the bulk of the performing musicians at this free event at Nashville's Benchmark Bar & Grill, including chapter coordinator
Brandon Branham. The ensemble was joined by guest guitarists
Bobby Tomlinson, Isaac Matthews, and G4V ambassadors
Sonny Moorman and Ali Handal, along with Yamaha Drum Artist Brian Fullen. G4V co-founder Patrick Nettesheim and Yamaha Corporation of
America president Tom Sumner, both guitarists, also joined the group onstage.
G4V provides veterans suffering from PTSD with lessons on the guitar and a forum to play as a means to heal and cope. Since its inception in 2007, G4V has grown to support 80 chapters in 40 states, operated by over 300 volunteers. Each student in the program is presented upon graduation with his/her own guitar pack, the crown jewel of which is a new Yamaha acoustic guitar. Graduates describe their guitars and the music they play as a way to ease their pain, give them focus, build their self-esteem and strengthen their sense of purpose.
Yamaha has been supplying G4V with guitars since 2012 at dealer cost, making it practical for G4V to expand to its current scope. To date, through this cooperative effort, over 2,000 new guitars have been awarded to grateful veterans as they graduate from the PTSD rehabilitation program, along with an additional 100 guitars donated outright by Yamaha.
"We started as just two guys with guitars visiting our brother and sister veterans in a Milwaukee VA hospital, and since then hundreds of us have found the strength to band together across the country," said Nettesheim. "Joining forces with Yamaha has greatly extended our reach, giving us the resources to support more chapters and bring relief through music to more veterans; these people onstage tonight stand as proof that this relief works."
"Guitars for Vets is a perfect fit with the mission of Yamaha, and Patrick has offered us a valuable opportunity to use a specialty of ours to help heal those who have already given so much," said Sumner of the partnership. "It's a small measure of appreciation, but it's richly deserved, and if it makes a veteran's life more bearable we'll gladly step up."
National PTSD Awareness Day is observed annually on June 27 as a day to recognize the effects post-traumatic stress has on the lives of those affected by it, including roughly 800,000 veterans. Historically, those who serve in our military have been especially susceptible: roughly 20% of service members deployed in the past six years have developed PTSD, and since the Vietnam War, more servicemen and women have committed suicide than have actually died in battle.
For more information on Guitars for Vets, visit guitars4vets.com
For more on the corporate social responsibility philosophy at Yamaha, visit https://4wrd.it/YAMAHACSR
