By India McCarty
DIRTY JOBS’ Mike Rowe shone a light on Black Horse Forge, a veterans’ organization that has changed the lives of thousands of servicemen and women.
“Over the last six years, I’ve profiled 14 organizations combating veteran suicide in non-traditional ways,” Rowe wrote in a Facebook post. “As many of you know, thousands of vets take their own lives every year, and I’ve tried to use my platforms and shows to call attention to a myriad of bottom-up solutions helping these troubled men and women.”
Rowe mentioned a South Florida program that “took vets on python hunts,” as well as an Indiana garage that teaches veterans “how to repair and rehabilitate old motorcycles.”
“All of these initiatives worked to varying degrees, thanks to a few devoted individuals committed to ending the scourge of veteran suicide,” he wrote. “But no one has come close to the success rate currently enjoyed by Steve Hotz, the man behind Black Horse Forge.”
Rowe continued, “Long story short, Steve came home from the wars battered and broken. Countless jumps from airplanes had compressed his spine, and a battlefield injury cost him an eye. At his lowest point, desperate for some kind of emotional relief, he started working with an old forge, hammering chunks of metal into something useful. The work provided a kind of relief he couldn’t get from traditional therapy, and soon, Steve was hooked.”
After seeing how beneficial metalworking was for him, Hotz “opened his forge to veterans in distress and built a community.”
“When I met him, several months ago, 22,000 vets had come through Black Horse Forge — many as battered and broken as he once was. As of today, there have been zero suicides,” Rowe wrote. “That’s simply astonishing, and proof positive that there ought to be a Black Horse Forge in every town.”
Related: PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW: Episode 1.1: “Saving Families in Crisis: Lenzy Phillips”
In an interview with WTOP News, Hotz explained, “I can really put our whole mission in one word and that’s ‘healing.’ If I close the doors right now, I think we’ve had a great success.”
A recent episode of Rowe’s new YouTube show PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW focuses on Hotz and Black Horse Forge. In an interview with The Daily Signal, Rowe remarked on the connection between bending metal and repairing something and the effects metalworking has on veterans’ mental health.
“I mean, the metaphor itself is huge, and [Hotz is] so unassuming. He’s a guy who literally saved himself by going in, figuring it out. And when he saw what it did for other people, it became his life’s work,” Rowe said.
He continued, “That’s the show. Great big ideas, really modest individuals trying essentially to prove that they can move the needle. And they do. We’ve done it with foster care, we’ve done it with illiteracy, and we’ve done it with homelessness. So it’s a micro-macro kind of approach. It’s really a love letter to bottom-up solutions.”
Fans of Rowe can’t wait to see what other organizations and local heroes he spotlights in upcoming episodes of PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW.
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