Heart for Healing: Former Owensboro residents still dedicated to veteran suicide prevention

Don Wilkins, Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.
Updated ·3 min read

Aug. 26—Eight years ago, Jeff and Criss Hastings sold their Owensboro home and most of their belongings for a cause.

They named it Warrior 180 Foundation — a faith-based nonprofit created to help veterans traumatized by combat, active duty military and military families.

The Hastings put everything they had into a 36-foot motorhome and began traveling the country at a time when more veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq were returning from battle and trying to reenter civilian life.

But in 2020, COVID-19 forced the Hastings to park their RV, putting their ministry in limbo.

Jeff Hastings said he and his wife had to put their "trust in the Lord" at that point.

"When COVID hit, everything that we had on the calendar was canceled within two days," Jeff Hastings said. "...We couldn't do anything."

Since then, the Hastings have gone part-time with Warrior 180.

But Jeff Hastings also found work as a chaplain at a retirement community in North Carolina, where his daughter and son-in-law live.

The Hastings' new home in Aberdeen is also 30 minutes from Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, which is one of the largest military bases in the world with nearly 50,000 active-duty soldiers.

"There are thousands of veterans here, and it's still God's call on my heart to walk with these people who are suffering alone, who are hopeless and feel helpless," Jeff Hastings said.

According to the 2022 U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs report, between 2001 and 2018, the number of veteran suicides increased on average by 47 deaths per year. In 2020, there were 6,146 veteran suicides, an average of 16.8 per day.

Jeff Hastings, 60, saw firsthand what war can do after receiving a waiver and enlisting in the Army at age 46 to become a chaplain.

He was deployed to Kuwait and Iraq for a year.

Jeff Hastings said survivor's guilt is among the top reasons veterans commit suicide.

"It's 'Why am I alive? I was in a vehicle with four guys; we were hit; three died; why am I alive?' " Jeff Hastings said. "I see that all the time."

Along with survivor's guilt, Jeff Hastings said veterans have trouble overcoming their pride.

"To say 'I don't need help, I can handle this on my own' is a lie that so many people believe," he said.

Jeff Hastings has also witnessed the personal effects of combat through his son, Logan, who earned a Purple Heart and was medically discharged from the Army in 2010. Logan Hastings lost 12 combat buddies to suicide in just eight years.

In 2017, Jeff and Logan Hastings kayaked the Mississippi River to bring awareness to the increasing suicide rate among veterans.

Part of Jeff Hastings' ongoing ministry is to train and equip others to "recognize the signs" of suicide.

"Not every day, but almost every day, it's the same story," he said. "Somebody was having trouble and the people in that person's circle didn't know what to do or how to keep that person safe. Then they take their life."

The goal now, Jeff Hastings said, is for him to return to his Warrior 180 ministry full-time or start working with the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE) — a 96-year-old evangelical, Baptist missions agency that supports more than 1,000 missionaries engaged in evangelism, discipleship and church-planting in 84 countries.

Jeff Hastings said whether or not he remains as a nonprofit with Warrior 180 or becomes a missionary for ABWE, his heart and passion are still with preventing suicide among his fellow veterans and bringing awareness to the issue.

"It's still as strong as the first days I felt it back in 2015," he said.