TU Veterans Service Partnership: Couples trip to Slough Creek

by Dave Kumlien

For the past several years, TU's Veterans Service Partnerhship has been blessed with the opportunity to take a group of veteran couples on a spectacular fly fishing trip to Slough Creek in Montana and Yellowstone Park. 

For 2016, we have five veteran couples and five volunteer guide/instructors heading into Yellowstone Park to fish the fabled waters of Slough Creek for the amazing population of Yellowstone cutthroat trout. Couples going on this trip have been nominated by TU VSP Chapter programs from around the country and by "alumni couples" who have participated on past trips. We have couples coming from Massachusetts, West Virgina, South Carolina and Oregon.

The therapeuctic value of fly fishing for trout is well documented, and those that have had the opportunity to serve in TU's VSP program and on this Slough Creek Couples trip have heard, first-hand, the wonderful testimonies from the veteran couples about how the VSP program has changed their lives.  Following is an excerpt from a speech given by one of the wives who participated in the VSP couples trip to Slough Creek and Yellowstone Park.

"I have never felt so uplifted by a single group of people, as I did when my husband and I were privileged to participate in a couple’s fly fishing trip to Silvertip Ranch through the Veterans Service Partnership. I watched him casting in the water, I watched him bubble with pride when he caught his first cutthroat trout.  I watched stress roll off his body and something was very different, but so very familiar.  I saw my husband as he was… before his life had been affected by his time in combat."

I am going to blog during the couples trip, so, keep checking for reports on the trip and a picture or two.  

Also, be on the lookout for a gofundme.com crowd funding campaign that TU VSP is going to start up to raise funds for the TU VSP/TAPS (Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors) Men's Retreat at Parade Rest Ranch on Hebgen Lake near West Yellowstone, Mont. 

This retreat is for men who have lost loved ones in military service. This is the third year that the VSP has partnered with TAPS on the Men's Retreat.  We'll have 40 men, mostly dads, who have lost sons and daughters in post-9/11 conflicts. TU VSP helps host the event, provides fly fishing instruction and two days of professionally guided fishing for 40 men on the world famous Madison River. We need to raise significant funds to cover TU VSP's part of this event. Check out TAPS. Amazing organization!  http://www.taps.org/