- [Keith] We're pretty close knit in the military and we don't get the opportunity a lot of times to really get involved in community because we're moving around PCSing or, you know, transitioning from location to location.

Now you're a permanent part of a community, you're like, "Okay, what do I do now?"

You know, other than get a job and, you know, continue to either work and take care of your family if you have a family.

That's important.

But then what about the rest of it?

I came here in '21.

Naturally I was gonna be connected to the VFW and DAV, and once I started attending, then I realized the conversation was around none of the groups having a permanent home.

So depending on what group you're in, your meeting place could be somewhere, anywhere around the area.

And a few of us got together, decided that we should probably pursue getting a place where all the groups would meet together.

We ended up having a meeting with the county commission.

This facility here, which was at the time, was the county maintenance building, was becoming available because they were moving out.

So we came over here and we got a lot of our veteran volunteers, family members, and everybody together to start cleaning this place up because it was trash.

But it was a maintenance building, right?

We started the process of actually having a facility.

We became a functional place where veterans can come and get a sense of community.

We became the Tri-Star Veterans Resource Center.

Resource Center instead of community center speaks more to what we do.

Its purpose is to help veterans find the resources that they need and connect them to the resources that they need.

And we wanna make sure veterans are connected to the VA, that when they need benefits help or guidance, we can send them down the hall to the Veteran Service officer.

And even more importantly, I think, or in addition to, we saw a bigger picture.

There's community partnerships that you can join as well as Veteran Service organizations.

So we partner here at the center with all of those to make sure that veterans can get not only the resources that they need, but feel like they're part of the community again as well, or join the community.

(gentle music)