Welcome Home - A Podcast for Veterans, About Veterans, By Veterans
Welcome Home is a Willing Warriors and the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run project. The program highlights activities at the Warrior Retreat and issues impacting all Veterans. For questions or feedback, please email us at podcast@willingwarriors.org.
Welcome Home - A Podcast for Veterans, About Veterans, By Veterans
A Legacy of Love: Larry Jackson on Reconnecting Families and Honoring Active-Duty Service Members
Larry Jackson's journey from a Navy veteran to the co-founder of the Ben Jackson Foundation is both touching and inspiring. In this episode, we're honored to hear from Larry as he shares the heartfelt story of his late son Ben, whose legacy lives on through the foundation. Designed to support young active-duty service members in reconnecting with their families during the holidays, the "Ticket Home Award" has, to date, helped countless service members bridge the physical and emotional distance from their loved ones. Join us as Larry recounts the challenges and triumphs of launching a nonprofit dedicated to strengthening family bonds, and learn about the profound mental health benefits of these reunions.
We also examine what sets the Ben Jackson Foundation apart. Unlike many organizations that focus on veterans, this foundation is dedicated solely to active-duty military members. Through community events and fundraising efforts in Wisconsin, they have raised over half a million dollars and are aiming for even greater impacts. Larry's gratitude for the community's support shines through, as does his appreciation for the opportunity to share this vital work. Whether you're connected to the military or simply value the power of family and community, this episode promises a moving and enlightening narrative.
Good morning. I'm Larry Zillik, director of Culinary Services here at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run, and this week our guest is Larry Jackson, one of the co-founders of the Ben Jackson Foundation. This is a unique organization that I ran across just on the web one day and I'd never seen anything like it, and it's just a great, great service that they provide. They offer financial assistance to young service members so that they can get a ticket home and come home and visit their families for the holidays, whether they're on a CONUS or out-of-country assignment. So it's just really a fantastic idea. Larry, welcome to the podcast.
Larry Jackson:Thanks, Larry. It's really great. A fantastic idea, Larry welcome to the podcast.
Larry Zilliox:Thanks, larry, it's really great to be here. So if you would tell us a little bit about how you came to form the organization and are you prior service yourself?
Larry Jackson:Yes, I'm a Navy veteran from quite a long time ago. Served in the Navy in the early 1990s.
Larry Zilliox:The foundation is named after your son, ben. Yeah, and can you tell us a little bit about Ben and how the organization came to be named after him?
Larry Jackson:Sure, my son, ben, graduated from high school in Wisconsin in 2016. Before he graduated, he was planning to go into the Air Force, enlisted in the late entry program. So he graduated and then went off to basic training in San Antonio Texas tech school also Texas and then got orders to go overseas to Masao, japan. So that was a big adjustment for someone who was 19 years old at the time. You know, it's an adjustment that most young people going into the military right at high school go through. So he went to Japan. He was I mean, it was a 14 hour time difference. So it was, it was a lot. Uh, it was difficult really for us to find any sort of time to talk when we were both awake and we weren't working or he was not working. Um, so, you know, there were definitely some points where he was just being in a new environment, where you know that he has to be around the world, struggled, you know, a little bit with just getting his legs underneath him. So I think the distance was a bit of an issue for him originally, but he quickly, you know, made a lot of friends and had a really great time in Japan.
Larry Jackson:At some point in January of 2018, he messaged me while I was on a work trip and say hey, I'd love to come home and surprise everybody. Uh, come back to Wisconsin. See, see a bunch of people. Can you help me out with a ticket? Uh, tickets airline tickets from Northern Japan through Tokyo and finally to Madison ran about, you know, $2,000. And this is six years ago, almost, I guess almost seven years ago. Um, so he, he needed some help paying for the ticket, cause that's about what he makes in a month. So I got on some. I got him a ticket. I had an airline mile because I traveled for work. So he came home, had a visit Uh, we had a great time surprised a lot of people. I was the only person that knew he was coming back.
Larry Jackson:So after that week, he went back to Japan. My wife brought him to the airport and then, about six weeks after he got back, a couple of Air Force officers came to our door and told him he had been killed in an accident on base. So with that, we had a lot of people donating money to us. Really just, you know, kind of like, we set up a quote memorial fund. We didn't really know what we were going to do with it.
Larry Jackson:And then my youngest son, matthew, said hey, you know we were talking about what we should do with it. He said Ben got to come home for a visit, see his family. We should help other people do the same thing, and that seemed like the perfect thing to do. So we created what became the Ben Jackson Foundation to essentially provide almost like a pseudo scholarship to young people enlisting in the military out of high school to help them cover that ticket cost when they wanted to come home. As a matter of fact, when Ben was home he told us a lot of his friends were jealous because while they could get the time off from work and they can take the leave, they just couldn't afford the ticket to get back.
Larry Zilliox:Yeah, I know personally. I was stationed in Guam and it was a long haul, time-wise number one, but also the cost was prohibitive for almost everybody. Well, that's a terrible way to have to come about forming an organization like this, but just the service that you provide is amazing. So tell us a little bit about the process. Are these, we'll call them, grants process? Are these, we'll call them?
Larry Jackson:grants available to any service member, or just Air Force, yeah, so we've named it the Ticket Home Award. So it's available to any enlisted member of the military that's been in less than four years. So our target demographic is enlisted, so officers aren't eligible, and essentially roughly your first duty station. So our target demographic is enlisted, so officers aren't eligible, and essentially roughly your first duty station. So our criteria is you've been in the military less than four years. There are some cases where they actually haven't been able to come home in their first four years. So in those cases we can still help them out too, but that's the eligibility. We can still help them out too, but that's the eligibility. We do have a process by which we will review applications and select them, because we get far more applications in a month than we could possibly support. So we do have a process to look at those and grant the ticket onwards.
Larry Zilliox:And the application process, that's through your webpage.
Larry Jackson:Yeah, so if you go to benjacksonfoundationorg. Slash apply, you'll get an application. We take applications throughout the month and then at the end of the month we start reviewing applications received in the prior month. So we give out awards once a month, so usually by the middle of the following month people will be notified if their application was approved or not. So anyone in October that applied we just sent out notifications about a week ago.
Larry Zilliox:And if I was a young service member thinking about applying and let's say I wanted to come home for Christmas when should I apply? Is that going to be like early October or?
Larry Jackson:Yeah, so there's really not a necessarily a time limit. If somebody applied in January and then got awarded in February, they could still use it, you know, down the line in Christmas for that year. So there's not really an end date per se. Yeah, but you know, if after there are some cases where we just don't hear from the person for a couple of years and then we just kind of essentially get a grant that award to someone else if they haven't used it after a couple of years of them, yeah, and how many awards do you do roughly a month?
Larry Jackson:I would say on average, in a ballpark we have about 15 awards per month. Wow, and that's what we can support with our current level of fundraising. So always looking for new, new donors and sources of support. But, um, that's about, I would say, on average, and I will say in November, so the current month that we're in, um, and I'm not sure when, when this will, when people will be listening to this, but every November we do what we call Home for the Holidays campaign, so we try to raise an additional amount of money in November to let as many people come home in, let's say, december, january, as possible. So this year our goal is to reach $30,000 in November.
Larry Zilliox:While we're on that topic, our listeners know that when I'm ever talking about a nonprofit, we're directing them to the webpage. So I want everybody to go to the benjacksonfoundationorg and you will see, as like every other veteran service organization, that donate button is right up there at the top right-hand corner. Now, normally it's red, but it's blue because of the Air Force, and I want everybody to start hitting that button and give what you can. I went through the process and made a donation and it took all of two minutes. So it's not a struggle, it's simple. Just go to benjacksonfoundationorg and the first thing I want you to do is hammer that donate button and donate what you can.
Larry Zilliox:Especially veterans, they know what it's like to be stationed far away, not be able to make it home for a holiday. I remember my first Thanksgiving. I was in basic training and I was ill and was not in the hospital, but they had this thing in the Air Force down at Lackland called the Intermediate Care Facility, and it's where you went when you were sick, but you weren't sick enough for the hospital, but you couldn't be in your training group, and that's where I spent my first Thanksgiving and it wasn't fun. And then being overseas too. You think more about your family and your loved ones when you're away and it's a holiday. So being able to support the Ben Jackson Foundation and to give out as many awards as possible to bring young service members home for the holidays, it's just awesome. Where do you see the organization in, say, five years?
Larry Jackson:Well, that's a great question. I mean, at some point we would love to be at a point where we could say yes to everyone. That applies, I think. You know I don't know how realistic that is necessarily, but I can tell you that we recently hit a significant milestone of, essentially, we have given out over half a million dollars in ticket home awards. So I think and really the majority of that has come has happened since May of 2021. So I think we'll definitely be over a million dollars in ticket home awards granted by that point for sure. Wow.
Larry Zilliox:And what about corporate sponsorship? Do you have any companies that come alongside to help?
Larry Jackson:We nothing, nothing big. You know we're always looking for support that. You know. If there's a company out there or organization that feels strongly about supporting military causes, we would love to, you know, work with them. I will say that something about us which you alluded to in the beginning.
Larry Jackson:We are a little different in a couple ways than a lot of organizations. We are a little different in a couple of ways than a lot of organizations. One is, like you mentioned we, there's not a lot of organizations out there that help young people or or really military in general. Getting home, when we first started the organization, I really thought that there would be, you know, many organizations that do this. So I first figured I'd go try to see what other organizations were doing and was quickly surprised to find out I couldn't really find any. So in that regard we're pretty unique.
Larry Jackson:I'm not going to say no one does it, but I mean we're pretty unique in that way. And then the other way is there's a lot of great organizations out there that support veteran causes. We are different in that we support active duty military, and not only that, but young active duty military when they're especially, you know, might be struggling with the stresses of being in a new environment away from home, stresses of the job of just being in the military in general, which can be stressful, and a lot of times, as you know, you're talking about your first Thanksgiving. Sometimes people just need to get back into their support structure that they had their whole lives. So that's where we feel like we're definitely unique and different in that we help, we all support mental health in a way that is is unique yeah, but so important.
Larry Zilliox:I mean. You know, when I saw your web page, I was just amazed I'm. I was thinking, wow, I hadn't even thought about something like this. This is just great. Again, listeners, it's the benjacksonfoundationorg. Take a look. There'sa great video on there. Assuming your wife made the video that talks about what they're all about. I encourage everybody to take a look at that, but be sure to donate. They also have a CFC number, so if you're a contractor or you're a government employee, look them up in the CFC directory and consider making that donation as well. So it's an ongoing thing. You guys are located in Wisconsin. Where are you in Wisconsin?
Larry Jackson:Just in the Madison area. Okay, so central Wisconsin.
Larry Zilliox:Yeah, yeah. I have fond memories as a kid of Wisconsin. I grew up in Illinois so we couldn't drink. We had to go to Wisconsin to drink.
Larry Jackson:Yeah, but also, yeah, I think they changed the drinking age right when I got into ice, when I started high school. They just changed it from 18 to 21, or something.
Larry Zilliox:Yeah, I know it was 18 when I was growing up, but also we went fishing up around Madison Lake, wabisa, and it's a wonderful area. Madison's a great town too. Do you do any local fundraising there? So if there are people in your area that they can go, do anything that you host.
Larry Jackson:Yeah, we have a few different things that we do during the year. Um, so we're actually based in new glaris, wisconsin, if you're familiar with that at all. Um, so there's a couple of local businesses that um support us, and then we have a festival in the fall. So the so bailey's run great winery. Um, they, they actually bottle a wine for us every year and then donate. Uh, I guess this is the fourth year that they donated six thousand dollars um based on the sales of the wine. And then, uh, we have another house in town that they they have a veterans day event for us every year and then, and then we're always out at Oktoberfest in at the end of September in New Glarus. So a lot of people, if you're willing to come out to uh to spend the weekend in New Glarus. So we have a lot of great conversations that weekend.
Larry Zilliox:Wow, that's awesome. Okay, well, listeners, if you're in Wisconsin, if you're in that area, you want to pay special attention to any of the events that they have, and I'm assuming that's all on your webpage, right?
Larry Jackson:Yeah, and usually that'll be posted on our Facebook page as well. So I would say, also check out the webpage, and we're most active on Facebook and Instagram.
Larry Zilliox:Great, all right. Once again the webpage is benjacksonfoundationorg. Go, take a look, be sure to donate, help them reach their November goal and we can get as many young service members home for the holidays as possible. What you all do is really special and I think our veteran listeners really appreciate it and understand that you do really serve a unique purpose that I hadn't even considered, but I'm glad I ran across your webpage and I really really appreciate you taking the time to join us and tell us all about your son and this wonderful organization.
Larry Jackson:Thank you, larry, for having me and for the donation you made, and I'll thank all of your listeners who took the time to hear about Ben's story and all of your listeners who are helping us by donating, so I really appreciate all of it. Thank you so much.
Larry Zilliox:So, listeners, we'll have another episode next Monday morning at 0500. If you have any questions or suggestions, you can reach us at podcast at willingwarriorsorg. Until then, thanks for listening.
