MY HEROES: Vietnam Service of Her 4 Brothers Inspired Blissful Retreat

Cindy McGrew learned early in life what wars can do to those who fight them. By the time she was a teenager, three of her brothers had served in Vietnam. “I saw how they were treated when they came home,” she told AARP Experience Counts.

“I could hear the stories they were telling each other. I heard their night tremors. I vowed to do anything I could to support future veterans."

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McGrew’s vow would grow into Operation Second Chance, a national nonprofit that serves wounded, injured and ill veterans, active duty Purple Heart service members and families.

Since McGrew, now 65, founded Operation Second Chance in 2004, it has given more than $15 million to thousands of veterans and family members for emergency financial assistance – mortgage and rent, emergency travel and lodging, caregiver help – and providing morale-related retreats.

In 2019, Operation Second Chance opened Heroes Ridgeat Raven Rock, a retreat center for veterans and families. Perched on a rural mountaintop on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, Heroes Ridge is a place where veterans, serving military and their families can come for rest, recreation, bonding and help.

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Covering 275 acres, Heroes Ridge has comfortable cabins, a horse stable, swimming pool, chow hall, trails for hiking and ATV riding. Counselors and volunteers help with programs aimed at different groups, including battle buddies, Gold Star families, couples, spouses and female veterans.  Operation Second Chance pays all expenses, including air travel, for participants from around the county.

McGrew had no idea what the project would become when she started out. She was a Client Services representative at Legg Mason (now Morgan Stanley) near Washington, D.C., and raising her daughter and three sons.

Then, a friend attached to the Stryker Brigade went to Iraq. It was 2004, when the war there was intensifying. “I started reading about guys from his unit that were injured and coming to Walter Reed,” she said. Sonn, she was making the 30-mile drive from her job to Walter Reed several times a week to visit injured soldiers and their families.

“The huge numbers that were coming in, I mean, Ward 57 and 58 were just full,” she recalled. 

McGrew saw there were lots of things veterans and families needed that the hospital couldn’t give them, things as simple as a change of clothes, something for a baby to sleep in, a night away from the hospital, help paying rent. She recruited friends to help, and they found clothes, Porta Cribs, and ways to help families get some free time.