COMMUNITY News:

Journey along Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh Trail captured in award-winning documentary Dan Gandee, a disabled Marine diagnosed with combat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and chronic pain, finds fly tying to be healing for himself and others.

The former horse trainer and avid fly-fisherman volunteered to teach fly tying at Healing America’s Heroes (HAH), a therapeutic equine and piscatorial program in Chama. The program’s participants are also veterans—men and women—who suffer from PTSD.

HAH founder, Eddie Crain, said the participants loved Gandee and his fly tying sessions so much they kept at it for hours longer than organizers had anticipated.

Gandee called his week with HAH “the most enjoyable time I’ve ever had with other people! We related to one another and communicated freely.”

At 7 p.m. Sept. 7 at the Reel Deal Theater, HAH will be the recipient of a fundraiser documentary screening at Reel Deal Theater.

“Blood Road” follows the journey of ultra-endurance athlete Rebecca Rusch and her Vietnamese riding partner, Huyen Nguyen, as they pedal 1,200 miles along the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail. Their goal: to reach the crash site and final resting place of Rusch’s father, a U.S. Air Force pilot shot down over Laos some 40 years earlier.

HAH recently received $3,500 in donations from the local American Legion and VFW. Ed McDaris (Sgt Mac), retired USAF, president of the American Legion Riders, will introduce Crain at the fundraiser.

“The trauma that military members live through manifests in many different ways,” McDaris said. “The Legion Riders are proud to support programs like HAH that ease the pain of so many veterans.”

Tickets are available now at the Reel Deal and on the day of the event. Bathtub Row Brewing will be selling beer and wine.

Visit www.bloodroadfilm.com/tuff for more information.