PUEBLO — Bob McCook starts every morning with his dogs and bees on his 47 acre ranch in Pueblo.
"I get before in the 4 morning, so I go to bed around 10:00, 10:30, 11:00," McCook says. "If you intrude on that time in the morning, I struggle with with my temper."
McCook loves the cool mornings on his ranch as he watches the sunrise.
"The sunrise is nothing like the sunrise on the ocean," McCook said.
He says the ocean because for more than two decades the retired Navy Chief Warrant Officer spent much of his time as a flight deck coordinator on aircraft carriers. It's a career he began just after his 17th birthday.
"I quit school in the ninth grade," McCook said. "Everyone told me that I would not make it. My dad wrote me a letter in bootcamp that said, 'This isn't your home don't come back.' I was in boot camp my second week, and I found out I found my home."
After his Navy career, McCook spent 20 years as a nuclear engineer. When he retired, he began to deal with a series of health issues and began isolating. His wife of 50 years, Belinda, started to get worried.
"He couldn't focus on anything, and when he tried to find something that would give him that spark, that energy, high energy things, it wasn't there," said Mrs. McCook.
He decided to get his family's finances in line and mapped out a plan to die by suicide in the next two years.
"I actually developed a spreadsheet," he said.
He told his wife about this plan.
"I fought 50 years to have him, to keep this going, and I see him day by day giving up on himself, not us, but on himself," Mrs. McCook said.
Then a chance meeting with a veteran while he was at a medical appointment began his path to healing.
"He said, 'Hey, have you ever heard of this Project Healing Waters?' He showed me pictures when he went. So I came home and told her about it."
The national non-profit helps veterans and active duty members of the military with disabilities like PTSD heal through fly fishing. But it took McCook two more years to agree to go on a trip with Project Healing Waters.
"When he told me about this, I said, 'You're going to be with your guys as soon as you get into (Project) Healing Waters, soon as you go fishing, you're going to be with your guys.'"
McCook says he agreed to take part in a four day long fishing trip in Montana. He describes it as a trip that saved his life.
"It wasn't just the fishing," McCook said. "It was being around veterans was being around people who understood what I was saying, other guys who were struggling."
He credits one veteran in particular, Dave Ross, for making that happen.
"I come to this and I'm clammed up and I walk in and he's there, I'm good," said McCook. "I'm out here with people that care."
Those moments are life-changing for the people who teach them how to fish, too. Volunteer Dave Brown has spent 10 years helping participants in the program learn how to fish.
"I'm going to call it the therapy of focusing outside of your own realm," said Brown. "Seeing something beautiful out there just opens them up and then when they finally hook into that funny little fish, it shouldn't be that significant, but sometimes it puts a smile on their face that maybe hadn't been there for months or years. That's as good as it gets."
Back on the ranch, the McCooks are moving forward with a new hope and gratitude for the men and women of Project Healing Waters determined to make a difference.
"I got back the man I married years ago," Mrs. McCook said. "He sounded the same, his voice, the words he was using, I had him back. I had him back. So when he says to me, 'There's another one coming up' (I say) 'You're going, absolutely you're going, go be with your friends, be with them, feed off them and do this.'"
Project Healing Waters began in 2005 helping service members wounded combat in Iraq and Afghanistan who were recovering at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The non-profit now it has locations all over the country. To find a location near you click here.
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