Retired Marine Corps Captain Jason Haag is a wounded combat veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is co-founder and CEO of Leashes of Valor and team captain for The Valor Cup.

Scott Allen grew up with only one career in mind — firefighter.

“I never wanted to do anything else,” said Allen, a Mount Airy, Maryland, resident.

Allen graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in fire science and joined the U.S. Marines to gain professional experience. It was 2004. He had just finished his training the following year when his unit got word to prepare for deployment. Two weeks later, he was in Iraq where he specialized in aircraft rescue recovery and CASEVAC missions.

Serving four years paved the way for his ultimate dream job. “I joined the Marines to serve but it was a stepping stone,” he said. “I was able to serve my country and now I was going to protect the community I grew up in by being a fireman.”

A routine call five years later changed everything. Removing some equipment, he slipped off the back of the fire engine and fell eight feet. He resumed activity right away but soon realized the pain he felt in his legs and back wasn’t going away. An MRI showed severe disc damage. Two surgeries didn’t help; pieces of his disc had actually broken off. Eventually, that forced Allen to make an even more painful decision. His body couldn’t take the physical toll that being a firefighter required. After eight years, he put in for medical retirement.

“Everything in my life was geared toward the fire department,” he said. He was lost without it.

In 2015, Allen picked up golf. Initially, he considered it a brain reset. He wanted to do something outdoors and he enjoyed being active. “I could relate a lot of stuff from the military and from the fire department to golf,” he said. “You train a certain way. You practice a certain way continuously. A lot of the traits and qualities I had in the military and the fire department I essentially mirrored in golf.”

Even with the physical pain he lives with, he can swing a club as long as he sticks to repetition. It’s important for him to play without sitting down, minus taking a break as that only tenses up his muscles. A simulator in his garage keeps him limber when he’s not on the course.

“But I can’t complain; how can I?” he asks. “So many have it worse than me.”

Today Allen works as a project manager for an HVAC company. He and his wife, Jessica, have four children — daughters Madison and Abigail and sons Jaxson and new baby Lucas. Golf has become addicting for him. He’s already been to St. Andrew’s with Pebble Beach and Augusta on a bucket list he intends to fulfill. He looks forward to his first Valor Cup.

Glenn Blackburn planned to be a social worker. But his country was fighting a war in Vietnam and had different plans for him. After graduating from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1968, Blackburn entered the Army and completed Infantry Basic and Advanced training a Ft. Dix, New Jersey.  A year later he was commissioned as an infantry second lieutenant at Ft. Benning, Georgia. 

Glenn served as a Paratrooper, Green Beret, and Senior Intelligence Officer with assignments to the 101st Airborne Division-Vietnam, the 10th Special Forces Group, the 172nd Light Infantry Arctic Brigade-Alaska, the Combined Field Army-Korea and the Defense Intelligence Agency. He retired from the Army in 1994 at the rank of colonel. His military decorations include the Legion of Merit 1OLC, Bronze Star for Valor-2OLC, and the Purple Heart.

“I enjoyed working with people, being challenged as a leader, serving my country, and setting soldiers up for success,” he said. “That’s what inspired me to make the Army a career.”

After the military, Glenn embarked on his second career, this time in public education through the “Troops to Teachers” program. “It was another calling,” he said. “It was also another way to serve.” 

He worked as principal of Hermitage High School and as assistant superintendent for operations in Henrico County, Virginia, helping with the design of nearby Glen Allen High School. “I loved working with the faculty, students and parents to create a positive learning environment,” he said.

After retiring from public education, Glenn and his wife, Susan, moved to the Low Country of South Carolina.  Glenn had always played golf for fun, but got serious about the game after retirement. Then in 2013, after suffering a life-changing stroke that affected the right side of his body, he thought he’d have to give it up.

His wife and golf buddies made sure he didn’t. He credits his wife’s “tough love tenacity,” On Course, and Adaptive Golf with keeping him in the game. “I am proof that golf therapy programs make a diference in the lives of those with physical challenges,” he said. 

Glenn and Susan work as volunteers supporting golf therapy and charity programs to help wounded and disabled veterans on their road to recovery. “My message is don’t let your disability define you. Go out and play the game. It will be hard, but you can adapt, adjust and achieve. If you believe, keep swinging!”

As an eighth-grader, Bob Bradshaw watched the C-130 jets soaring overhead from McGuire Air Force Base and said to himself, “I want to do that.”

Yet the third of six children who grew up in southern New Jersey knew college wasn’t in his future. So, at 17 he signed up for the Air Force, where he learned to be a C-131 mechanic. In the fall of 1968, he was sent to Vietnam.

“My job was to work the turnaround ramp for C-130s,” he said. “I fixed them and got them turned around.” Bradshaw embraced the 12-hour night shifts, sometimes working all night and frequently playing Pinochle on slower evenings. “I loved it,” he added.

After a tour in the Philippines, Bradshaw separated from the military as a Sergeant E-4 and transitioned into a career in building design and construction. He’s worked in every aspect of that business. While living in Southern California, he got serious about golf thanks to the moderate weather.

“I’ve gotten down as low as a 1 handicap,” said Bradshaw, who lives on St. Helena Island, South Carolina today with a special significant other. “Now it’s vacillating around a 5 or 6.”

Bradshaw tries to play golf at least five days a week. The game’s challenges keep him interested. 

“You can never perfect it,” he said. “You’re never going to perfect it from one day to the next or even one hole to the next. You can never get too uppity with yourself because as soon as you do, the golf gods will put you right back where you belong.”

Not all trauma is inflicted on the battlefield.

Manuel Dukes Jr. spent a decade in the Marine Corps but got out before the U.S. became involved in the Middle East. From 1980-89 he worked as a photographer and photo tech in an intelligence capacity, both stateside and in overseas deployments. And he saw things that he can never unsee.

“My issues, my PTSD, don’t have anything to do with combat,” Dukes says. “Accidents, murders, suicides, plane crashes — when you’re a photographer, you have to go and take pictures of those things. Even if they don’t ask you to shoot the pictures, if you work in the photo lab you’re still processing color photos of some very disturbing things.”

Dukes, 60, enlisted in the Corps in 1980, leaving behind a college athletic scholarship because he wanted to start earning a paycheck. He left the service in 1989 as an E-4 corporal.

He eventually got interested in computer programming and today works as a software configuration manager, including work as a civilian contractor with Fort Meade.

Growing up in Detroit, he had no interest in golf. There was not enough action to suit him.

“I was a great athlete — I could run and jump really well,” he says. “I played all sorts of sports growing up, and I was a tournament racquetball player in the Marine Corps. I never wanted to walk around a golf course.”

That changed about a decade ago when some friends got him out on the links for the first time and his competitive instincts kicked in. All it took was one long, straight drive down the fairway and he was hooked.

“Now,” he says with a laugh, “I go nowhere without my clubs. Nowhere.”

For Phil Hebner, The Valor Cup is a home game. The charity golf tournament tees off within walking distance of his home, which is located alongside the second and third holes of the Federal Club Golf Course in Glen Allen, Virginia.

“I pretty much just walk out the door and start playing,” Hebner says. “The clubhouse is maybe a quarter-mile away. It’s very convenient.”

Hebner, 53, joined the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves in 1989 and left six years later as a corporal. These days he describes himself as “a jack of all trades, master of none.” 

After high school, he spent a year at Old Dominion University in Norfolk but decided he wasn’t ready for college and didn’t have a clear direction in mind for his career. He enlisted in the Marines and was trained to serve as a helicopter crew chief. He deployed in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, serving in support and re-supply roles. 

“It’s an incredible maturing opportunity,” he says. “The level of responsibility you’re given in the military, right out of boot camp, is very high. I was 20 when I got out of boot camp, and at 21 I was the crew chief of a helicopter on a multi-million dollar platform, responsible for the pilots, passengers and cargo during flight operations.”

Four decades in the military and law enforcement took their toll on Jim Herring. He underwent surgeries to repair his shoulders, knees, hips and elbows. He even had two spinal fusions. 

So it made sense that he would sell his motorcycle. He figured his days of riding a bike were done. Herring kept his golf clubs, though.

“After I play, I have to ice everything,” Herring says. “I put ice on my knees and my elbows and my wrists. But it’s worth it. Golf is my hobby. It’s my thing.”

Herring, 61, grew up in the Richmond area but now lives in Roanoke Rapids, N.C. When he graduated high school in 1979 he didn’t much like the construction work he was doing so he enlisted in the U.S. Army’s military police training center at Fort McClellan, Alabama.

He figured the military would be good for a few years and then he would move into law enforcement. Instead, he made a career out of both — serving in the Chesterfield County, Va., police department for 28 years and deploying to the Middle East several times as a Special Forces reservist before retiring from the Army this summer as a Chief Warrant Officer 5.

His Army decorations include the Bronze Star and Silver Star with Valor, as well as the Purple Heart.

He is still figuring out what will fill his time in retirement, but when Herring looks back he has a clear picture of his life to this point.

“My entire adult life has been spent in service of my country and my community,” he says. “I don’t know any different.”

Two months after Sept. 11, 2001, Alvin King left for Afghanistan, eager to make a difference after the unprecedented terror attacks.

It was also personal.

“My first baseball coach was a firefighter and was part of the initial wave to go into the Towers. He didn’t make it out that day,” said King, who lives in Blythewood, South Carolina. “I grew up in Brooklyn and had friends and relatives who are firemen and first responders. My mom also worked in Manhattan, just a few blocks from the Towers.”

King had joined the Army in 1998, beginning a 20-year military career that included deployments twice more to Afghanistan and three times to Iraq in addition to Africa, Jordan, Turkey and Bosnia.

King served as a senior intelligence advisor. That gave him the opportunity to meet local leaders and learn just enough of multiple different languages — Swahili, Dari and Pashto among them — to converse.

Upon retiring as a First Sergeant, King started his own leadership consulting business and founded Range Fore Hope Foundation, a nonprofit that serves the entire veteran community and their families. Like Leashes of Valor, Range Fore Hope focuses on the effects of post-traumatic stress disorders and uses competitive golf as a healing tool.

The foundation’s two annual tournaments, King Fore a Day and Fairways to Freedom, raise funds to offset the costs of free golf instruction. In September, King will host the Inaugural Palmetto State Adaptive Golf Open, a South Carolina statewide adaptive golf tournament.

King learned about the Valor Cup through his own charity work that connected him with Leashes of Valor CEO/Founder Jason Haag and Program Head Chris Bowers.

“We’re very likeminded,” King said. “We’re about helping veterans and their families and want to give back and serve.”

King has also written a book: “Purpose Fulfilled: A Guide to a Life Well Lived.” It’s not an autobiography, he says, but rather a book meant to promote thought. Yet the title is fitting for the Army combat veteran who is inspired to serve in everything he does.

King and his wife, Dina, have been married 24 years. Both of their children are high achievers. Their daughter, Araesia a Temple Law School graduate, is a lawyer in Philadelphia, and their son, Jalen, graduated from Yale University and is applying to medical school. King also raised his brother, Ryan, after their father died abruptly. Ryan is in the Air Force and married with two children.

“There’s so much life going for me,” King said. “It’s been a really cool ride. I’m blessed.”

An Army infantryman, Chris Landeros started playing golf for fun around 2007. He never could have guessed that the game would quite literally save his life a decade later.

In 2017, Landeros experienced leg pain every time he swung his golf club–and it wouldn’t go away for a couple of weeks. “I only had pain when I golfed. It was the only time it bothered me,” he said. 

For six months, he was in and out of doctor’s offices and the emergency room, until finally a doctor ordered an MRI. That’s when they found the source of his pain. Laderos had bone cancer. He was 32 years old. 

“If it hadn’t been for golfing, it probably would have been too late” by the time his cancer was discovered, Landeros said.

He endured eight months of in-patient chemotherapy and two 30-hour surgeries to save his leg, all with the hope of returning to the Army. Although Landeros recovered, “I didn’t recover to the standard of the Army.”

He medically retired after 17 years and went back to golfing as part of recreational therapy. “I’ve put a lot of effort into my swing that can work with my leg and back,” he said. “When I’m golfing, I have no problems. I don’t have PTSD. I’m a healthy regular, person on the golf course. When this team, it’s not just me on my own. Since the Army, I haven’t had that.”

Landeros is also grateful to his wife, who has supported him throughout his journey and who bore the burden of caring for their two children while he underwent treatment. “I have an amazing, supportive wife. She takes care of us.”

Kurt Knapper had his pick of enviable options as a high school senior. Playing minor league baseball was one. Attending Notre Dame on an ROTC scholarship was another. The route he chose, accepting an appointment to the United States Naval Academy, paved the way for a lifetime of accomplishments.

Graduating from the Academy in 1984, Knapper was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. His father, Roger, served 27 years, and like him, Kurt wanted to be an infantry officer. He reported to his first infantry battalion in Hawaii in 1985 — the same unit Roger Knapper commanded 10 years earlier. “I followed a similar path based on guidance from the greatest man I’ve ever known,” said Knapper, whose military decorations include Navy Achievement and Navy Commendation Medals.

After multiple deployments to Okinawa, Korea, and Japan, Knapper was selected to attend the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he earned a master’s degree in management. His final tour was in Quantico, Virginia, and after nine years in the Marine Corps, he went to work for Coopers and Lybrand, one of the Big 6 accounting firms.

Knapper spent 20 years in management technology consulting before deciding he needed a change. “I happened to be in the right place at the right time,” he said of his next gig, working for the PGA of America. Knapper initially sold and delivered corporate hospitality services for all of the PGA’s championships, including the 2016 Ryder Cup. He subsequently moved on to become the Assistant Executive Director for the Middle Atlantic Section of the PGA.

Knapper started playing golf during his time in Hawaii and living in Monterey strengthened his relationship with the game, where he would occasionally caddie. “People got a kick out of having a Marine Corps Captain carrying their golf bag,” he said.

Knapper and his wife, Kristen, recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. He has two adult sons. His eldest, Christian, followed his role into consulting; and his youngest, Reed, is a junior at Juniata College and tight end on the football team.

Finally, Kurt chokes up talking about what it means to compete in the first Valor Cup. “It’s an opportunity to give back and build new relationships that probably, like many others from my military days, will last a lifetime.”

In 1988, Scott McDonough was a college dropout tending bar in South Florida and starting to feel burnt out from the long, late hours. That’s when he decided to join a couple of his friends who were enlisting in the U.S. Army.

“It was really just an impulsive thing,” McDonough says. “I wanted to do something different and I figured it was worth a shot. And, well … 26 years later …”

Twenty-six years later he retired from the Army as a Master Sergeant with a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. He deployed seven times, including four deployments to Afghanistan and one to Iraq, and earned two Bronze Stars, a Legion of Merit and many other medals and awards.

Much of his work with the Army was as a career counselor, working on retention and re-enlistment. It wasn’t hard for him to find motivation for those sales pitches, considering the effect the Army had on his own life.

“It settled me down and matured me right away,” McDonough says. “It showed me how to become a leader. In the Army, you either become a leader or it doesn’t work out — it’s up or out. It gave me a lot of drive.”

Today McDonough, 59, is a civilian with the Army, working as a program manager for the 1st Special Forces Command Foreign Language training division. 

When Brad Pierce graduated from high school in 2004, he turned down offers to play college football and instead enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. The memories of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks three years earlier were still fresh in his mind, and he wanted to serve his country.

He left the Corps six years later after three deployments to Iraq in which he earned two Purple Hearts.

“I was blown up four times,” he says very matter-of-factly. “I didn’t lose any limbs, but I took some shrapnel. I had concussions and a (traumatic brain injury). In the big picture, I was lucky. I took some bruising on the brain, but physically right now, I’m OK.”

Pierce, 36, started Mainstay Information Solutions, a cybersecurity and IT company, in 2012 and does a lot of government contract work in Arlington, Va.

He plays a lot of golf these days, having picked up the sport relatively late in life and gotten hooked on it through the Salute Military Golf Association, which uses the sport as outreach for wounded veterans.

“I wish I would’ve given up football for golf a long time ago,” he says. “I was always intrigued by golf but I didn’t play it much until about 10 years ago. There’s no other team, no one playing defense — no one to blame but yourself. You never master it. You just always keep trying to get better.”

Growing up in Alabama, Thomas Robinson played every sport he could think of and was a good enough student. But when he graduated high school and enrolled in college, he figured out pretty quickly it wasn’t for him.

More or less on a whim, he enlisted in the military. When the recruiter asked him why he wanted to join he said he wanted a job he could do outdoors. The Army assigned him to an infantry division.

And, quite simply, it worked.

“After a while, it was almost too easy,” Robinson says. “Everything is told to you, and you do what you’re told. Be at the right place at the right time in the right uniform and call everyone by their rank. What could be simpler than that?”

Robinson, 40, spent more than 20 years in the service, deploying to Afghanistan and twice to Iraq. He spent the past decade at Fort Bragg, and when he retired this summer as a sergeant 1st class, he decided to stay in nearby Hope Mills, N.C.

A few years into his time at Fort Bragg, Robinson began playing golf with some friends who started getting him out on the course more regularly. He took a liking to it, and today he is enrolled at Methodist University’s PGA Golf Management program.

“In a few years I’d like to be a teaching pro or a director of golf,” he says. “I enjoy the game enough that I’d really like to get into the business.”

Tim Shannon graduated from high school in Middletown, New York, and joined the Navy, extending his family’s commitment to service. Two of his four brothers are Navy and Air Force veterans; another joined the New York City Fire Department and the other was a New York City Police Officer. The Navy trained Shannon to become an electrician, and later he became a master electrician.

Aboard the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy, Shannon lost his right leg below the knee in an accident near the end of his fourth year of service. He didn’t let that daunt him despite struggling to find work after leaving the military six months later. “Nobody would hire a guy with a prosthetic leg,” he said. “I finally got hired at a local lighting store and then got an electrician to hire me where I worked for 20 years.”

Despite the injury, “You couldn’t stop me from doing anything,” Shannon said. He played baseball and soccer and bowled, all sports he excelled at as a youth. “But I never played golf,” he said.

At a friend’s suggestion, he experimented with the sport that has since become his passion. Shannon is among the founders of Range Fore Hope, a nonprofit that provides access to a variety of outdoor activities, golf included, to assist active-duty service members, veterans and their families overcome the difficulties attributed to the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Shannon and his wife, Cathy, have been married 32 years and are parents to two children, Caitlin and Daniel. “Without my wife, I probably wouldn’t be here today,” Shannon said. “She takes great care of me and has been a blessing.” Shannon is also attached to his Schnoodle, Chester, his shadow.

Nicholas Thom had never seen anyone like him play golf before. Then he met Leashes of Valor Program Director Chris Bowers. 

Thom lost both of his legs during an IED explosion when his unit, Charlie Company, 1st Batallion, 2nd Marines, was deployed to Musa Qala, Afghanistan in 2019. He also lost three fingers and eight inches of the ulna bone in his right arm.

Chris Bowers is a fellow Marine veteran who lost his left leg following a combat injury in Iraq. Thom credits Chris for giving him the gift of competing on the golf course again. Chris is like a planet, Thom said. “He makes people come and orbit around him.” 

Thom calls himself “very fortunate.” A medical vehicle with a unit surgeon was already en route on the day of the accident. Thom spent the next three years as an inpatient/outpatient at Walter Reed National Naval Medical Center. During a retreat there, he met Bowers.

Prior to that, Thom had only played golf using a Para Golfer. Bowers convinced him he could play standing on prosthetics. “From then on, I’ve played standing up; it helps with my confidence and walking,” Thom said. “When it comes to walking on prosthetics, golf is the best form of physical therapy in my opinion. Keeping balance while swinging the club, as well as traversing different angles and elevations, really give you an appreciation for flat ground.”

Thom’s 4-year-old son, Waylon, also keeps him grounded. Golf is something they do together. “He’ll concentrate for four or five holes and then the rest of the time he’s running around in the fairway screaming,” Thom said.

Thom looks forward to playing in the Valor Cup for the competition and camaraderie. “I think a lot of guys who train in a team format and operate as a team miss that when they leave the military,” he said. “They miss being part of something bigger than themselves. I’m looking forward to that, and of course, good golf, too.”