Fort Totten

For whatever reasons they join, and no matter where, when, or how long they serve, the call to service is one of the great ennobling aspects of American society. 

Preserving stories of service and highlighting individual service members remains one of Fort Totten's great undertakings. Through the work of the Takoma Foundation, we are also proud to be involved both locally and nationally in support of our nation’s military and the men and women who serve. 

Also this fall, Fort Totten will present 12 Ordinary Stories, an oral history of local veterans, including those who served in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and Desert Storm. 

In December, Fort Totten will also publish The Years of War: ‘Military History’ and the Shaping of the Soul.  In this brief monograph, Malik Wilson, Takoma’s founder, runs down the line to describe how the years of reading and learning about war and statesmen, calamity and folly, destruction and possibility, established a kind of lament of the possible, and probable. In reading seriously and tenderly about tragedy and courage, weakness and strength, a sense of oneself – in private, sequestered, away from trouble – can be tested out, drawn together. The author intrigues how the stories of war and peace we read also read us, establishing our own small heroisms, our need for collaborate change, and the universal search to find a grand cause worth fighting for.

December 15th, 2025