After 33 years of service, Lieutenant Colonel and Homegrown By Heroes FVC member Tim Doherty has shifted his focus to agriculture and its therapeutic benefits for veteran rehabilitation.
“It’s like getting send home unexpectedly from a job that you love and having to leave your brothers and sisters in arms behind as well as the mission you love. You have a huge void and have difficulty relating with others and difficulty finding a purpose.
You train for your deployment, on deployment, you’ve got that purpose and you’re operating at the highest level you’re trained for.
Then you come home, go back to your civilian job and you’re not involved in that duty and you’re not around the people you’d spent every day with, 24/7.
You get addicted to the adrenaline. You don’t have that purpose when you come home and you don’t have that adrenaline rush. I’d found a new purpose, something to look forward to. Keeping bees.”
Doc’s Healing Hives is Tim’s non-profit. It provides opportunities to veterans, who struggle with physical and mental challenges associated with service and deployments, to heal their service wounds.
Fun fact: As the co-chair of the legislative committee for the Georgia Beekeepers Association, Tim helped develop the Georgia license plate to save the honey bee.
“The solution isn’t going to be to talk to someone who doesn’t understand what you’ve been through or found in a prescription. The solution is being purposeful and being around people that you can relate to. Beekeepers and vets have a ton in common. It’s a can-do [mindset] to take care of our bees as we take care of each other.”
