Community Healing Waters making a difference for vets
The program offers veterans therapy through tying flies and then using them to fish.
In the meeting room at Cabela’s in Rogers, a handful of Bella Vista residents and their students — a retired Army draftee and his wife — wrap threads around shiny hooks held in specialized vises to create colorful fly-fishing lures.
Beth Armour, a Bella Vista resident with 18 years of Navy experience under her belt, heads up the Northwest Arkansas chapter of Project Healing Waters, a nationwide nonprofit that helps veterans, particularly those with disabilities, cultivate a fly-fishing hobby.
“Fly fishing is such a concentrated sport,” Armour said. “For those with PTSD, it helps them get the clutter out of their heads.”
The Northwest Arkansas chapter, she said, meets in Fayetteville during the daytime and in Rogers at night. This helps people who live in the different cities meet and also allows the organization to offer different time slots, which can be helpful for younger veterans who are working.
It’s an effective form of therapy, she said, because it provides the veteran with an activity that is relatively quiet and requires a significant amount of concentration, meaning they’re focusing on fishing or fly-tying instead of their stress.
Armour said she’s had participants who have woken up from nightmares and calmed themselves by crafting new flies.
“When you think about it,” she said, “it’s kind of a form of meditation.”
The organization, she said, furnishes supplies, particularly things geared toward helping veterans fish despite any physical issues they may have. One-handed ratcheting reels, waders with a clip for the rod and all-terrain wheelchairs are just a few tools the organization has to help participants engage in the sport.
In addition to helping their members make flies and go out fishing, Armour said, they’re also willing to provide advice on what equipment will suit their needs if the participant has any shopping to do.
Karen and Jay Allred, a couple who lives near Beaver Lake, came in with a rod they had just purchased in the store and were quickly given the nod of approval — it should at least get them started.
Jay Allred served in the army from 1961-1963, after being drafted during John F. Kennedy’s presidency.
“I was in Germany with him,” Karen Allred said.
“She sold my hot rod to move out there,” Jay Allred added.
Jay Allred said he was drafted shortly after quitting college. His father had just died and he worked in an industrial bakery to take care of his mother.
He was in one of the last few groups of married men to be drafted, Karen Allred said. He was trained as a squad leader.
“They told me I was smart enough to be a pilot,” Jay Allred said. “I was smart enough not to be a pilot.”
Living on the lake makes it a bit easier to test the lures they made, and Karen Allred said they’d be doing that as soon as they could.
Dick Mairet, 73, is both a volunteer and a participant.
He was in the army during the Vietnam War, he said, and now he’s living in Bella Vista, working with Project Healing Waters, and occasionally bass fishing as well.
“In Vietnam, you never knew,” he said. “They might be coming in the compound, cutting hair or cooking dinner. Then, at night, they’d be throwing satchel charges.”
At one point after he came home, he said, he heard fireworks down the street and his training kicked in — he jumped and took cover, just like he’d learned to do when bullets were flying.
But fishing, he said, has proven to be a healthy outlet.
“It gets your mind off everything else,” Mairet said, “and helps you focus on it.”