Folds of Honor
Higginbotham and Hillwood last week hosted a breakfast at the historic Fort Worth Club in support of a nonprofit with a profound purpose.
Represented by top executives Rusty Reid and Mike Berry, the companies on Thursday presented Folds of Honor Foundation CEO Lt. Col. Dan Rooney a $70,000 donation to advance its mission in North Texas. The event was part the cityCURRENT Signature Speaker Series.
Folds of Honor provides educational scholarships to the families of fallen and disabled service members. Rooney said the foundation has provided $245 million through 53,000 scholarships in 16 years. The Class of 2023 was represented by 9,200 families and $42 million passed out.
Among the recipients over the years was Sarah Duncan, who attended Auburn and today is the foundation’s North Texas Regional Development Officer. Her father, a pilot in the U.S. Air Force, was killed during a routine flight check off the coast of North Carolina in 1995.
“Folds of Honor is a unique cause that is very easy for us to support,” Berry said. “We got on a Zoom call with Sarah Duncan and she told us the story and literally in about five seconds, [Rusty] and I looked at each other and said, ‘We're in.’”
For the 2023 fall semester, Rooney said, Folds of Honor has provided approximately $5.5 million in scholarships to 1,163 recipients in Texas alone. That includes 107 at University of Texas, 141 at Texas A&M University, and 12 at TCU.
“These are your hometown heroes,” Rooney said. “These are your people. Lean in, take care of them.”
The breakfast on Thursday attracted a big audience, including TCU Chancellor Victor J. Boshcini Jr., a representative of Texas Sen. Kelly Hancock’s office, and Fort Worth City Council members Alan Blaylock, Carlos Flores, and Charles Lauersdorf. If there was a table empty it was well hidden. The event, of course, was intended to also nurture more givers to the cause.
The right guy was doing the cultivating. Rooney’s story — and his recitation of it — and his presentation of the mission of Folds of Honor is compelling.
He is both a PGA golf professional and a decorated F-16 fighter pilot with served three tours in Iraq. He has received the White House's Presidential Volunteer Service Award, the Air National Guard's Distinguished Service Medal, the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and the PGA of America's inaugural Patriot Award.
He told the story of his epiphany as a 12-year-old. He was at the golf course when he said he met a fighter pilot.
“I look at him,” he joked, “and I’m like, ‘You can be grown up and cool?’ And he looks back at me and he was like, ‘Yeah.’ I’m like, that’s it, first man crush. This is what I want to be when I grow up: 40 years old and cool.”
There are indeed few, if any, others who can claim to be a PGA professional and a fighter pilot.
Rooney, a member of the Oklahoma National Guard, recalled a professor of his at Kansas University who instilled in his students the value of every day and the energy and motivation needed to pursue goals, overcome challenges, and make positive changes in one’s life. A sense of determination and commitment.
“He said, ‘Every day you wake up, you get two things: a chance and a choice. You got to understand that the choices that you make both big and small are writing the legacy of your life. You can choose to be positive or negative. You can choose to build things up and turn around. You can choose to be uncommon.’
“And then he walked up and he wrote something down on the board that literally would transform me for the rest of my life: ‘Every choice you make follows a logical path. And it starts with, I won't do that. I can't do that. I'd like to. I'll try. I can. I will. If you can make it to, “I will,” nothing can stop you.’”
Folds of Honor
Rusty Reid, left, and Mike Berry with Dan Rooney
Rooney was inspired to form the foundation on a commercial airliner en route to Grand Rapids, Michigan. As he entered the plane, he noticed an Army corporal dressed in Army greens. He found out the story as the planed landed and made its way to the gate.
“The captain comes over the P.A. and says, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have an American hero onboard. We’re carrying the remains of Cpl. Brock Bucklin who was killed in Iraq. His identical twin brother Brad Bucklin is in first class and has brought him 7,000 miles home.’”
Brock Bucklin, 28, was killed in an equipment accident in Balad, Iraq, in 2006. Soldiers were lifting equipment and a chain hoist broke, striking Bucklin in the neck and fatally injuring him. Brock had joined the Army about a year after his twin brother did, in 1997.
Brock was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 68th Armor Regiment, 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division in Fort Carson, Colorado. The unit deployed to Iraq in December 2005.
“Brad and Brock made a promise if anything ever happened, they would carry their brother off the plane,” their mother told a news reporter at the time of Brock’s death. “[Brad] did not want to break that promise.”
Rooney watched as Brad Bucklin walked alongside his brother’s flag-covered casket to meet his family. Among them was Brock Bucklin’s young son, Jacob.
Rooney was moved. When Rooney arrived home in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, he said he sat with his wife with “no money, no influence, nothing.”
“And we wrote down our mission statement which has been unwavering: honor the sacrifice, educate the legacy. God calls us to take care of widows and orphans, man. We live in a complex world, but I still think it's pretty darn simple: When people need help, you help them.”
Said Duncan, Folds of Honor’s North Texas Regional Development Officer: “When I say that Folds of Honor changed my life, that’s not a cliché, it’s a real truth. Obviously the educational scholarship was a huge financial relief, but just to know that there are groups of people — strangers — that care about the sacrifice my dad made and that our family made as well, is a gift.”
