‘My wounds are invisible.’ Ex-soldiers help scores of vets — and themselves.
The two former soldiers are doing their parts half a state apart.
Dominique Williamson, a Jamaica-born and Florida-raised ex-Army master sergeant, is now based in a small office park near Fort Benning in Columbus.
Jon Jackson, a New Jersey native and ex-airborne Ranger who’d been stationed at Benning, resides on a small farm on the outskirts of Milledgeville.
Both of them offer counseling and run nonprofits that aid fellow veterans, many of them hurting, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Though they work independently, they know of one another. Their missions now, in retirement, are interwoven. Both estimate they have helped thousands of fellow vets in the decade-plus since they left the Army.
Georgia is home to more than 600,000 veterans, dozens of Veterans Affairs healthcare facilities and numerous military installations for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.
This Veterans Day, many current American service members are stationed in the Middle East amid a fragile truce after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in February.
Dominique Williamson and Tranquility Gardens
Williamson, 53, retired after 20 years in the Army, where he worked as a Black Hawk helicopter crew chief. He now oversees a Columbus nonprofit that helps veterans obtain disability benefits. The Veterans and Family Assistance Center, founded in 2016, also caters to vets in need of counseling, including PTSD.
On the clerical side, the center assists more than 1,000 soldiers a month. The organization also arranges deep-sea-fishing trips and owns a lakeside retreat, Tranquility Gardens near Buena Vista, that is a getaway for former service members.
Williamson moved to South Florida from Jamaica when he was 7. He joined the Army in 1992 at age 19. He was wounded in Afghanistan in 2010. He has since struggled with depression and PTSD.
Williamson described “a dark hole” that threatened to tug him under in the wake of his retirement a decade and a half ago.
“I was willing to risk it all because I had no care,” he said recently. “When I say risk it all, I could walk out and put a bullet in somebody just for tooting their horn at me. When I got to that place, I knew it was bad. PTSD is not just one scenario. … It builds and builds and all of a sudden you find yourself being the Incredible Hulk. Before you know it, you’re that angry person.”
For Williamson, his faith and his work helping others is, as he puts it, “my drug of choice.”
“If I’m not helping somebody, it’s almost like a dark cloud,” he said. “I’m always on the go. To me, if I stop, that cloud catches me. And when that cloud catches me, depression comes in, I fall back in that slump. I’m angry, I’m grumpy. But if I’m out there helping you, I feel good about myself. And as soon as I’m through helping you, I’m off to the next person.”
Jon Jackson and Comfort Farms
Jackson, 50, was in the Army for 11 years. He founded Comfort Farms a decade ago, naming it after fallen comrade Kyle Comfort, who was killed in action 16 years ago in Afghanistan.
Jackson, a Bronze Star recipient who joined the service in fall 2003, figures he survived more than 20 blasts from improvised explosive devices that damaged vehicles he was in. He suffered seizures and retinal damage and has blind spots in his vision. But, he said, “Most all of my wounds are invisible.”
“I was the type of vet that didn’t believe in a PTSD diagnosis,” Jackson said in early November. “I’m like, ‘What the hell is PTSD?’ I’m like, ‘You know what, we went to war, we did what we had to do.’”
He medically retired as a staff sergeant in January 2015 because of injuries sustained in six combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a Ranger, he worked as an austere-logistics specialist. His job, he said, was “to make sure my team was as lethal as possible.”
After he left the service, Jackson wondered what he would do. Though he had never done it, farming appealed to him.
“I just wanted to kind of escape from the world,” Jackson said, “just be by myself and develop the land.”
He considered opening a barbecue joint with home cooking but first wanted to raise animals and grow vegetables and learn the logistics of farming for food and, in the process, help fellow veterans.
He started his farm in 2016 and soon veterans from all over were coming to learn the basics of agriculture and, the hope was, healing. Some vets would live at the farm for a while. Scores more attended weekend workshops and retreats.
Comfort Farms adopted a motto, a nod to the Ranger way: “Nothing grows in comfort. You only grow in your discomfort.”
“When a vet comes in, they think that they’re learning how to farm. And that’s what we use as kind of the veil or the cloak,” Jackson said. “But, in actuality, we’re helping vets understand how to become human again.”
In their words
The following remarks, lightly edited for clarity, are quoted from recent conversations with Jackson and Williamson.
Dominique Williamson on what Veterans Day means to him:
Veterans Day is about remembering those who served and making sure those who are still fighting their own battles are not forgotten.
Veterans Day reminds me of the sacrifices that I, along with my brothers- and sisters-in-arms, did for this country. I was so fortunate to answer that call and take on the responsibility of defending this nation. But the sad reality of it is there are a lot of memories of people that are no longer here with me. Close friends that I served with, not being able to pick up the phone and call them.
When someone comes up and says, ‘Thank you for your service,’ it’s a two-sided coin. On one side, we didn’t serve to be thanked. You did it because of country and loyalty and service. But then on the flip side, it does make you feel good because it shows that people recognize what you’ve done to give them the freedom that they have or some of them take for granted.
I remember going to an elementary school with a veterans group to talk with the kids, and the kids saying, “Thank you.” But then I remember an older gentleman, he was probably a custodian, and he saluted us. And in the military, the salute is the highest level of respect and honor that you can give. And to get that salute just meant a lot.
My uniform may be hanging in my closet, but my commitment to service is still very much alive.
Jon Jackson on what Veterans Day means to him:
On Veterans Day, a lot of us vets share our pictures on social media to just show, ‘Hey, yes, I’m a vet.’ I’ll pull up some old pictures of me in the military. My friends will do the same. I think about how many of us signed up during the global war on terrorism and did what we had to do. We didn’t do it for political reasons. There is a certain camaraderie amongst us. It doesn’t matter what our political affiliations are, what our religious affiliations are. We all wear green. We’re all war fighters. We all have a certain level of respect for each other.
What I think about on Veterans Day is I wish that our country had the same type of ethos. We don’t have to agree with each other, but we respect one another. We have dialogue. Our country is so polarized. Veterans can take the lead in pulling people together. I would die for somebody’s right that I don’t believe in. That’s the American thing to do.
If I wasn’t a vet and I had a neighbor that was a vet, I would go over and take my family and I’ll mow his lawn or her lawn, their family’s lawn, or something like that. Just acts of kindness. A lot of us vets are hard. We don’t want help. We don’t want to feel soft. We’re the most capable, we’re the most able. But sometimes for us hardened vets, especially us combat vets, we’re gonna tell you no at first, but it requires a stubbornness to tell that vet, “No, we got this.”
Saying, “Thank you for your service,” is great. But if you have a vet in your neighborhood, making a meal for them or just inviting them over for a barbecue, it goes a really long way. For me, Veterans Day means unity.