Magazine for area’s veterans to launch Wednesday

LOVELAND – A veteran photographer and a cast of freelancers on Wednesday will launch a bi-monthly magazine based in Loveland and aimed at veterans and their families in Northern Colorado.

Creative director James Daigle will host a launch party for Veterans Life Magazine from 4 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at Crooked Beech Brewing Co., 3121 N. Garfield Ave. in Loveland.

“I list myself as creative director, not publisher, because it’s not all my thoughts,” Daigle said. “We’ve got a huge amount of veterans up here. The mission of the magazine is to bring together so many parts of the veterans community, introducing people who would never have met other people, and introducing them to nonprofits that can help them.”

A Boston-area native, Daigle said he started his career with sports photography, but “you couldn’t control your life with sports. So my older brother said to go to a school and photograph the senior class.” He was told to keep his camera set on a specific F-stop and shutter speed “and don’t touch anything.”

Daigle went on to photograph people in publicity and commercial fashion settings, including celebrities such as Sid Caesar, Vincent Price and Michael Landon. “They were nice because you weren’t a paparazzi, you were there to promote,” Daigle said.

“But I was kicking around the thought of shooting real seniors instead of seniors in high school.”

It helped that he came from a family with military experience. His father, Eugene Daigle, was a radio operator for the Air Force during the Korean War, and his older brother, Eugene Jr., enrolled at the Air Force Academy but then left to join the Coast Guard.

That legacy prompted Daigle to start the magazine. “Connecting that community. That’s what my dad did,” Daigle said. “Everybody in the VFWs in Maine knew who my Dad was.”

Interviewing veterans can include centenarians who may no longer have the appearance they once did, he said, but “because I’m not a journalist I’m allowed to fix them up or clean their shirt so they look the way they deserve to look.”

The big job now will be getting paid subscriptions, Daigle said. The magazine’s online presence will focus more on events and calendars, he said, “while the magazine will be more like a book of stories.”

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