Bodies of water large and small, fresh and salt water, have a way of calming us. The methodic crashing of waves, rushing of currents, or rippling on lakes provide order and rhythm in an otherwise chaotic world. I find comfort spending time on the Jersey shore, but my brother Chris would like nothing more than to be fly fishing on a river. Chris is President and CEO of Trout Unlimited, an organization of more than 150,000 members, organized into 400 chapters, that are dedicated to the conservation and restoration of coldwater fisheries across the nation.
For the last few years, Telos has provided funding for Trout Unlimited’s Veterans Service Partnership (VSP), which provides veterans with hope, rehabilitation, and camaraderie through the healing power of water. The program has been a wonderful success; to date, TU Chapters across the country have helped nearly 7,000 wounded veterans, donating over 60,000 volunteer hours. VSP also provides fishing retreats for veterans with physical and emotional scars, and their spouses.
At the annual VSP dinner earlier this year in Washington DC, we were able to hear from a husband and wife who attended one of these fishing retreats. Jessica, the wife of Damein, who served three combat tours with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, gave her remarks first, as her husband heard for the first time how meaningful the experience was to his wife. Her remarks truly capture the heart and importance of the Veterans Service Partnership. I had planned to summarize her remarks, but was not able to do it justice. With their permission, I’ve included her speech in its entirety:
First off, I would like to share my gratitude to the Trout Unlimited Veterans Service Partnership for their work, their mission, and their devotion to helping Veterans and families like us. Thank you for recognizing that there is a need, and providing a relaxing and therapeutic aid through fly fishing, to help our service members find a peaceful distraction from what they may be dealing with. I have never felt so uplifted by a single group of people, as I did when my husband and I were privileged to participate in a couples fly fishing trip to Silvertip Ranch through the Veterans Service Partnership.
During this time of turmoil in the Middle East, our service members have shown us their absolute best. I am proud to say that my husband was one of them; he served in the Army 9 years and endured 3 combat tours with the 82nd Airborne division. He is our family’s pillar, and being the leader that he is, he carried the burden from his deployments along with the demands of our family until it became too much to bear. I watched my husband slowly disengage from us, become distant, and wrestle with matters that left him sleepless and bothered. He was hurting.
As a spouse, it is hard to watch the person you love the most go through something that you know you, yourself, can’t fix. The more I tried to expose the problems, the longer the lengths he went to hide it, dismiss it, to protect us from it. Damein was trying to figure out how to live with what happened, while I was trying to figure out how to deal with our newly delicate situation. But as time and life move forward so do we and we became complacent of each other, and we set our minds toward the everyday matters that took up our time.
We moved back to our home state of SC after Damein was medically discharged from the Army. I could tell Damein was struggling with all of the free time that retirement had granted him. Luckily, Damein was introduced to a local Project Healing Waters program run by the Mountain Bridge Trout Unlimited Chapter in Greenville, SC, who reintroduced him to fly fishing. Damein started involving himself into the meetings and I could see that there was energy to his voice, and for the first time in a long time, he was excited to talk to me about fishing.
He told me one night about the opportunity to go to Montana to do some fly fishing with Trout Unlimited Veterans Services Partnership, the first thing that came out of my mouth was, “Are you sure I can go?” and the second was “I’ve never cast a fly rod in my life!” Soon after that we were off. I watched Damein on that trip…. I watched him casting in the water, I watched him bubble with pride when he caught his first cutthroat trout. I watched stress roll off his body and something was very different, but so very familiar. I saw my husband as he was… before his life had been affected by his time in combat.
I understood the serenity, the focus, and the silent satisfaction that he found in fishing. He was enjoying life, he was enjoying people, and he was surrounded by the most beautiful landscape we had ever seen. It was a sight for my eyes to behold, and I witnessed there what a quiet river and a fishing rod, could do for your soul. It was a time of reflecting and reconnecting for us and I feel like we both had the opportunity to decompress, enjoy each other, and just breathe.
We shared an amazing week with couples who had felt, in one way or another, the same connection to the river that we did. In the evenings, we sat around a fire, we laughed and we cried, sharing stories about the past, stories about the present, and I fell in love with this program. I fell in love with the compassion and the heart behind the work that Trout Unlimited and their partners are doing for our Veterans and their families. I fell in love with the guides who devoted themselves to work with each Veteran’s sensitive needs. I fell in love with the comradery and the brotherhood that was felt from each of the Veterans with us that week, Veterans whose service ranged from Vietnam to OIF/OEF.
I fell in love with the way it brought spouses together so we could share our husband’s enjoyment and their healing. We left Montana with a renewed energy for our relationship and in turn, it has reflected beautifully on our family. It is my hope that this program will continually be rewarded with stories of the difference you all have made in the lives of our Nation’s Veterans and their families.
Thank you to this amazing couple for letting me share their story, and to Trout Unlimited for helping our nation’s veterans find hope and healing on the water.
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