Helping Veterans and the Community

In this episode, Christopher Page talks about the importance of community involvement. He’s worked with his local community to do everything from 5x the size of his local American Legion post, raise awareness for suicide prevention, homelessness amongst veterans, TBI, PTSD, and other veteran related issues. He’s done a lot of great work, that you’ll appreciate if you have a soft spot in your heart for veterans. Links & Resources Chris on Facebook Chris on Instagram Chris on Twitter Chris on LinkedIn Army Week Website Transcript Expand Scott DeLuzio:    00:03    Thanks for tuning in to the Drive On Podcast where we talk about issues affecting veterans after they get out of the military. Before we get started, I’d like to ask a favor. If you haven’t done so already, please rate and review the show on Apple podcasts. If you’ve already done that. Thank you. These ratings help the show get discovered so it can reach a wider audience. And while you’re there, click the subscribe button so that you get notified of new episodes as soon as they come out. If you don’t use Apple podcasts, you can visit DriveOnPodcast.com/subscribe to find other ways of subscribing, including our email list. I’m your host Scott DeLuzio. And now let’s get on with the show. Scott DeLuzio:    00:45    Hey everyone. Today my guest is Christopher Page. Christopher has been the Commander of an American Legion post in New Jersey for the last three years, and during that time he grew the membership through strengthening the ties to the local community. He’s currently moving on to be the Vice Commander in the County where he’s working to entice younger veterans to join the American Legion. Christopher also started a nonprofit that helps raise awareness for veteran mental health, suicide awareness and several other issues. So Christopher, thank you for joining us today. Why don’t you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself? I’m sure you can fill in some of the gaps where I left off in the intro, but why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do there. Chris Page:    01:31    Thank you very much. I really appreciate this opportunity to come on here. So, a little bit about myself is that I’ve been in the Army for a little over 16 years now. I’m a senior NCO working a staff position and I also teach op sec Chris Page:    01:48    where it’s a bit of running around to a couple of the national guard units here up and down the East coast and Reserve units. So that’s been a pretty interesting part of my career having left running around in the woods and chasing after soldiers a lot. It’s actually quite relaxing before going down to a first sgt. position, which I think I’m going to be doing sometime this fall. The other things I do is that I started up a great little nonprofit in New York City and celebrating the Army’s birthday. Every year we pick an army veteran who has, since hanging up the uniform, gone on to do great things within their community. The way of giving back and how that all started was several years ago, I was standing around with a couple of Marine friends of mine celebrating the Marine Corps birthday on November 10th. Chris Page:    02:41    So as we are raising glasses to the Marine Corps, no better friend, no worse enemy, they all started chiding me on why the Army has no interest in doing something similar. So, after a few beverages, we all decided that it would be in our best interest to do something similar for the Army in New York City. Why not? Fortunately for me, I knew the head of Army...