Platoon 22 started after the second soldier from Frederick County, Army Specialist Adam Richardson, died by suicide. No longer could we stand by idly as our nation’s warfighters fought the war at home alone. The first issue we saw was that very few even knew there was a suicide epidemic within our ranks. What we needed was a way to quickly engage the populace while at the same time conveying the enormity of this epidemic. With 22 Veterans lost to suicide each day. Our initial goal was to make people aware of what was going on. However, very quickly, we started getting calls to help veterans in crisis. We discovered that most, if not all, of them, were not in the VA system. More importantly, this was not just in our area but reflected the reality across the nation. That’s when we realized we needed to shift our focus to providing better transitional support services. That leads us to start looking into the possibility of creating our own Veteran’s service center. It just so happened that at the same time, our President and founder, Danny Farrar was asked to attend a community round table as the voice for veterans for Goodwill of Monocacy Valley. Goodwill had conducted a community needs assessment and realized there was a strong desire to and need to assist veterans in our region. As a result, they were looking to pursue the idea of opening a veterans center. That was all we needed to know that now was the time to take that leap of faith and fight for our warfighters. Several meetings later, the commitment was made; we shook hands, signed on the dotted line, and became partners to bring the Platoon Veterans Services Center at Goodwill to life. Located right here in Frederick, MD, it will be the first of its kind. Platoon 22 hopes to expand nationally and honor our social contract to take care of Veterans when they come home.
