My Story

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     My name is Jonathan Locke and I am a US Army Combat Veteran. While I was in the Army and stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, my Company deployed to Uzbekistan / Afghanistan and twice to Iraq. While in the Army I married my wife, who is from Romania, in 2003. 

     After I left the Army we decided that we would move to Pennsylvania to be close to my mother since she was dealing with health issues. While trying to adapt to life as a civilian, I was battling rage, lack of empathy, becoming withdrawn and anxiety to list a few. To be honest, at the time I couldn't see it myself, to me it was just stupid things getting me frustrated very quickly. Loved ones in my life would point this out to me, and sometimes that alone would cause me to get upset. After a few years of being out of the Army I finally realized that I did need help before I loss the things that meant so much to me. Trying to go to the VA to get the help I needed, they kept brushing me aside and telling me I am only stressed and I'll get over it. I was so angry with the VA, for years they would not help me and finally I had enough and decided to see a private doctor so that I could finally get the help that I needed. 

     Seeing that there was a need to help fill the gaps I was seeing between Veterans and the VA. I eventually started a nonprofit organization in January 2015 called Operation Veterans' Hope (OVH), which at first was only for Veterans, later OVH opened to help anyone. We operated a thrift store where we provided a homeless person a place to stay while they worked in our thrift store. This was our Work2Stay program. I was not getting paid to do this, I took the small disability I was receiving and my wife was eager to help support what I was doing and went back to work to help financially. Sadly, 3 years later my mother had passed away and hit me pretty hard. I fell into a dark place and just fell apart. My health eventually had got to the point where I could barely function myself. Because of my health sadly in 2024 we had to close the organization.

     After a lot of discussion with my wife, after my mother passed she wanted to be close to her parents in Romania. I thought this was a great idea, I no longer had my parents so our son would at least be close to one set of grandparents. We left everything behind, packed up 2 suitcases each and moved to Romania.