Dustin Luecke, longtime news anchor at WXOW Television in La Crosse, Wisconsin, can smell a good story. So, when he heard about a pilgrimage for veterans to Assisi and Rome, Italy, under the tutelage of Fr. Conrad Targonski, OFM, he thought he had landed a good one.
The results of that instinct, complete with footage of the journey of 33 veterans and their families as they walk in the footsteps of St. Francis, will soon be available.
“It’s been a passion project,” he said during a break from his duties at the Wisconsin station.
In La Crosse, the military is always a local news story as the nearby Fort McCoy U.S. Army Base is a prominent employer, and the city has become home to many retired veterans.
Dustin has long been reporting on the widespread concern about mental health issues faced by returning veterans, as well as their alarming suicide rate. When he heard about the pilgrimage, he saw it as an effort to address those concerns through a spiritual approach.
The documentary, said the news anchor, is a way to get out the word about the pilgrimage and its impact on veterans. Fr. Conrad has led a number of such trips over the years.
“There are other avenues to healing,” said Dustin. “That was what set it off in my mind.”
The pilgrimage focuses on St. Francis, showing how the man from Assisi was more than the founder of a great religious order. He was also a veteran himself, a wounded prisoner of war, who emerged from the horrors of war with a spirituality to face his personal demons. The trip to Assisi and Rome focuses on integrating Franciscan spirituality with the struggles of returning veterans. On the pilgrimage, the veterans begin to see a connection between their own 21st-century struggles and those of the medieval St. Francis.
Before going on the pilgrimage, Dustin had little knowledge of Francis’ military service. But he took in the stories of how the son of a wealthy merchant became a knight, fought for his city-state, and returned ravaged by the scars of war. The parallels become evident to the vets who take the pilgrimage, some of whom have experienced Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) brought on by their military service.
Much of the documentary, filmed with a crew from Wisconsin, focuses on what Dustin described as “the spirituality of place.”
For the pilgrims, filmed during their trip last May, there was a depth of “being in the places where Francis walked and seeing the same things they would have seen.”
“I felt a deep connection with that,” said Dustin. In particular, he remembered the site where Francis would go for solitude.
“Just being there in the hilltops of Southern Tuscany and knowing that the landscape hadn’t changed much since Francis’ time, seeing the birds and valley he would have seen, puts you in tune with God,” he said.
Many of the veterans who accompanied him on the journey felt the same way. A vet pilgrim described it as “a way to hear the whispers of God over the noise of the world.”
While he is uncomfortable with the public spotlight, Dustin said that Fr. Conrad will be a central character in the documentary. The chaplain at Viterbo University is a retired Naval chaplain who served with Marines at the battle for Fallujah during the Iraq War. Ever since, the friar has made it his mission to reach out to veterans who have overcome the trauma of war.
“He is the conduit through which this works,” said Dustin.
A variety of sources have funded this labor of love. The Franciscans, Viterbo University, and St. Bonaventure University in Olean, New York, a school that sent student veterans on the pilgrimage, all contributed. Other expenses may be financed through social media crowdfunding.
Dustin hopes that editing will be done in time for a scheduled Veterans’ Day screening in La Crosse. Later screenings are planned for St. Bonaventure and Las Vegas, and he is pushing for a wider distribution.