Celebrating Veterans Day: 3 Foundations Making a Difference For Wounded Warriors

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself. ~ Joseph Campbell

In honor of Veterans Day we here on the DorobekINSIDER wanted to take a moment and highlight three organizations that are really going above and beyond to help our wounded warriors.

• The Warrior Foundation serves those that serve the US. The foundation serves four distinct groups of wounded warriors in everything from providing housing to flying soldiers home for the holidays. Sandy Lehmkuhler is founder and executive director of the Warrior Foundation. She says, “our mission is to assist, honor and reward our warriors. If we can make things a little bit easier why wouldn’t we?”

• Operation Jump Start: Getting soliders back on their feet one suit at a time. Ed Meagher is a former Vietnam Veteran and a government contractor who collects suits, aides in resumes and gives career advice to warriors transitioning back to the civilian workforce. He says, “Back when I was in Vietnam people got the warrior confused with the war. When I came back we hid our uniforms grew our hair out to distance ourselves. We decided we weren’t going to do that this time around. You can have whatever opinions you want about the war. But it doesn’t change anything about the warrior. These are the men and women we should be proudest of. They stoop up and they stepped up. Most of these folks knew exactly what they were getting into and they said take me, i’ll go, you have to respect and honor that.”

• Getting warriors back on their feet one fly fish at a time — Warriors and Quiet Waters. Tom O’Conner and his team outfit wounded veterans with fly fishing gear and take them to the roaring waters of Montana. O’Conner says, “out on the river their are no ranks, just names, individuals with a shared mission. It’s amazing to see how a week on the river can change a warrior.”

Thanks for all you do!

— The DorobekINSIDER Team