Every day, America loses 17 heroes to suicide.

Veteran suicide remains a pressing issue in 2022. The most recent data from the Department of Veteran Affairs indicates that 17 Veterans die from suicide every day. This number had dropped from 22 to 17 recently. Yes! This is great news that we are making progress, thanks to all of our supporters and the organizations working toward this goal. However, we still have lots of work to do.

What this statistic doesn’t reflect are the families left behind. The little girls who won’t have a father (or mother) to walk them down the aisle on their wedding day. The sons who won’t have a parent to call when they get stuck in the midst of a house project that’s left them stumped and frustrated. It doesn’t reflect the brave spouses left behind who are thrown into the world of being a single parent while coming to terms with their own grief.

That’s why I am asking you to become a member of Campaign 17- our monthly giving program- with a gift of $22/month
Join Membership

You may choose to give $11, $22, $66, or $100 per month. If you prefer to send a check, please indicate that it’s for the membership. If you want to pay for the full year at once, that’s perfectly fine too. Just make sure you indicate it’s for the membership Campaign 17.

When we lose another veteran, a family is left shattered, and a community left with a hole in its heart. There’s an empty seat at the holiday table, a friend missing from team trivia, and nothing but the crisp, cool sheets and a tear-stained pillow left beside the broken-hearted spouse who held their family together through moves, missions, and deployments. For the families left behind, the battle has just begun.

To The Long Walk Home (TLWH), this is unacceptable. Since 2006, your support has enabled us to work tirelessly to provide educational resources and transformative experiences for Veterans and their families. Your belief in our mission means that we are able to provide life-saving interventions for veterans and their families year in and year out.

When you become a member, you help us to serve the over one hundred individuals we have served this year alone—and you help us to serve the hundreds more we expect to help in the months to come.

The painful reality is that each day, more veterans return home and are faced with the insurmountable task of living their lives while carrying the weight of their service with them.

Because of our steadfast commitment to provide these services at no cost to our service members and their families, we need your help with a gift of $22 today.

But more importantly, veterans like our friend Chris need your help:

“I am an Army Veteran of six years, I did missions in 6 different countries over the course of one combat deployment and I was struggling with alcohol severely. Still functional, I would like to claim, but we all know the truth.

I spent a lot of time volunteering at schools before my downfall and enjoyed helping people every chance I got. When I heard of Ron and The Long Walk Home, I felt immediately obligated to do something, not only to help others, but to fix myself. Between the program Ron has laid out, his mentorship and the ability for me to help others with their struggles I was able to truly focus on myself and what I felt I needed to do to be the man I once saw myself as.

Ron’s work truly turned my life around. He and Craig are two of the best people I know and it is truly an honor to have the opportunity to help them on their mission to help others.”

Given the severity of the Veteran suicide crisis, we hope that you will consider becoming a member of Campaign 17 with a recurring monthly gift of $22 to support our ongoing efforts. If becoming a member of this life-saving campaign is not possible for you today, we understand and hope that you will join us with a gift of a personally meaningful amount.

No matter the size, each gift is a reminder that we are not alone in this fight.

Your donation will go toward sustaining our Mentorship Program, suicide intervention workshops, and local events. There are 400,000 Veterans living in Sarasota County, and millions more living nationwide. Our goal is to extend our services to as many of these individuals as we can feasibly manage.

Over the course of a year, your $22 monthly gift will pay for a veteran or member of their personal support network to attend our ASIST suicide intervention workshop or our Mentorship Program.

The benefits of joining:

1. Knowing you are contributing to a great cause and helping to save lives
2. Free car magnet to show your support
3. Free t-shirt to the first 10 members
4. Annual zoom meeting with our founder, Ron Zaleski, to get updates and see what we’ve been up to.
5. Being part of a compassionate group of people
6. Free book for support at the $66/month or higher level. You’ll also receive a signed copy of Ron Zaleski’s new book, The Long Walk Home: A Veteran’s Barefoot Journey Across America.

On behalf of our board, staff, Chris, and hundreds of veterans just like him, we thank you for your steadfast support of our work, and look forward to seeing the impact that your gift will make possible in 2022.

With gratitude,

The Long Walk Home Team

Ron Zaleski (Executive Director), Terri Miller (Assistant Director), Cody McElhinny (Communications Manager), Ron Newhouse (Training Director), Alex White (Assistant)

PS: Please join us with your gift of $22 today so that we can ensure that the veteran who comes to us in crisis tomorrow can receive the services they need to win the hardest battle of their life.