Harbor Theater, Operation V4V launch monthly veterans events in Two Harbors

Matthew Unzeitig opened the Harbor Theater to Operation Volunteers for Veterans, launching two recurring monthly programs for local veterans: a veterans-only coffee break on the first Thursday of each month and a veterans’ movie night beginning in April. The theater lists the coffee session for Lake County veterans as free and limited to veterans, with the next coffee break scheduled for May 7 from 9 to 10:30 a.m.

The Harbor Theater held a public grand reopening on April 10, 2026 after soft-open programming in 2025, and advertises seating for about 80 people across traditional seats and couches. The venue at 616 - 2nd Avenue, Two Harbors, will host the movie screenings and the coffee gatherings, and the theater’s calendar also shows ongoing ID.me help sessions folded into the veteran-focused programming.

Operation Volunteers for Veterans, known as Operation V4V, was incorporated in Minnesota on June 2, 2025, and had received 501(c)(3) status by September 2025. Founder Tanya Bruzek developed the nonprofit after an early idea to assist families of fallen officers evolved into focused veteran outreach, and a September 2024 conversation with Lake County Veterans Service Officer Brad Anderson helped move the effort forward. Operation V4V has distributed holiday aid locally, offering 20 "Thank You For Your Service" Thanksgiving meal kits, and has provided in-person ID.me assistance to help veterans create verified accounts needed to access VA.gov services.

The programming ties directly to practical barriers veterans face. ID.me is one of the identity-verification services used by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and other federal sites to grant online access to medical records and benefits, so on-site help with verification can remove a major hurdle to benefits access for veterans who struggle with remote authentication processes.

The partnership also signals a civic role for the restored building. Unzeitig, a veteran and the theater’s owner, has described the restoration as a rescue of a long-shuttered landmark, saying, "The building would not have lasted five more years, but we saved it." By offering the space to a grassroots nonprofit led by Bruzek, the Harbor Theater moves beyond occasional film nights to a steady schedule of veteran-specific programming that can produce regular foot traffic and volunteer engagement downtown.

Lake County is a small community, with a population near 10,800 and an estimated veteran population on the order of roughly 1,000, making targeted, recurring outreach feasible in scale but meaningful in impact. County veterans services staff including Brad Anderson and Assistant County Veterans Service Officer Melissa Crandall are publicly listed as local points of contact, and Operation V4V has engaged with county board meetings as it builds its volunteer operations.

The immediate test for Two Harbors will be whether monthly veterans-only coffee breaks and movie nights can convert reopening enthusiasm into sustained attendance, volunteer support, and visible downtown activity while delivering tangible benefits such as ID.me help and meal-kit assistance to area veterans. If those elements hold, the veteran-owned Harbor Theater could become both an anchor for downtown recovery and a steady civic hub for a population that often faces isolation.