Heroes Freedom Weekend

9/11 Memorial NYC

The following post was a letter written by Veteran Circle Program Manager Antoinette Batchelor -  sent to the couples who attended The Coalition to Salute America's Heroes very first Heroes Freedom Weekend. the event took place over 4 and a half days in 2 cities.

The event started in Washington DC where our Heroes were taken to visit monuments and memorials before a Train ride to New York City to visit Lady Liberty and culminating with a tour of the 9/11 Memorial with special guests Jack Scalia and Joe Torillo - former NYFD and first responder.

All attendees were members of The Coalition to Salute America's Heroes membership program The Veteran Circle.

To learn more about the Heroes Freedom Weekend view the Heroes Thanking Heroes newsletter later in the month. It was an exiting journey that will hopefully stay with the 13 couples who attended for many years to come.



Dear Heroes,

Wow! What a Ride.
When we first dreamed of the Heroes Freedom Weekend It was lacking a vital component, You!
It was you who made it such a success, one that will hopefully continue to help veterans for years to come. I cannot express to you the level of gratitude we have for your patience and understanding of the challenges of an inaugural event and most importantly we are so grateful for your service.

“Many of our nation’s heroes volunteered for war after the tragic events of September 11 2001.  The heart of many American warriors can be found at ground zero, but very few of them have been afforded the opportunity to visit this sacred site in person.”

The Heroes Freedom Weekend Team
Battery Park NYC

The above was part of the initial proposal for the Heroes Freedom Weekend sent to the Coalition’s CEO, David Walker.  My husband and I had just completed our very own freedom tour with the Perez family, visiting many of the sites we visited together last month. We followed a near Identical path to the one we walked with you.  I knew standing at the feet of Lady Liberty that this reconnection was something our Veterans needed. Not only a reconnection with our spouses, or our brothers and sisters in arms, but a reconnection with our country. So many veterans return and feel disconnected from the nation they fought so valiantly to defend. What better place to reconnect with the foundations of this Nation that it’s Capital.

And so began the Heroes Freedom Weekend.

We had 13 veterans attend, but it’s still not enough. We want 13 more, we want 130 more, we want 1300 more to walk those halls and hopefully start to heal. We had a great many hopes for the Heroes Freedom Weekend.  We hoped to strengthen marriages, we hoped to build brotherhood, and sisterhood, and family.  We hoped to give you an experience like none other so that you could walk away from and feel as changed as we did the first time (and now the second, and hopefully the third fourth and fifth times).

We hoped that we could give you back something you gave of so freely to your country. It might seem like a cliché, but we believe that every man and woman who picked up arms for this country, who saw a great evil and did something about it, despite having never stepped foot on the grounds, left a small part of their souls in the grounds of a field in Pennsylvania, the Brick of the Pentagon, and the foundations of Ground Zero when they signed on that dotted line. You sacrificed your health, your wellbeing, your limbs, your family, your peaceful sleep for this nation, and we are grateful to you.

We hope you were able to leave behind that which has been eating you all these long years, that you were able to lay at the base of the freedom tower your anger, your guilt, your sorrow, or whatever it is you’ve been using as a place holder and that you were able to pick up the part of your soul that is so filled with love of country it couldn’t bear to see it suffer.

We hope you found family and renewed strength. In spite of the challenges we faced we hope you knew without a doubt that you were surrounded by men and woman who have been where you are, are where you are or are headed in that direction and I hope you felt as I did that we were unstoppable. That no uber issue, tour guide or bus driver was going to stand in our way. What is the hustle and bustle of New York City when you have 13 other Veterans at your side?

I hope the challenges we faced, the uncomfortable situations, the iffy moments with New York’s more colorful inhabitants reminded you, that you are never alone. That for as long as we have each other, we have a battle buddy, and we never leave our family behind.

Thank you for making this dream of ours become a reality. Thank you also to Sara Miller who sacrificed sleep and sanity to make sure the Heroes Freedom weekend ran as smoothly as it did. She is a magician of logistics and without her the event would still be sitting in the maybe one-day pile. Thank you to Donny Daughenbaugh who you may not have realized just stared down Hurricane Harvey while welcoming a new born baby girl into the world. Thank you to his beautiful wife Sarah for sharing him with us.

-The Heroes Freedom Weekend Team.