Jeremy Harrison, co-founder of Helping Heroes, stands at the entrance of the former Manufacturer’s Light & Heat Building on 16th Street, which will serve as his organization’s new headquarters.

WHEELING — Jeremy Harrison, co-founder of Helping Heroes, is undaunted in his mission to assist military veterans dealing with some of their darkest times.

It has been his years-long passion because he has walked in their shoes.

He remembers the days he felt throttled by post-traumatic stress disorder, wondering when the light would break through the gloom. He has seen for himself what a comforting voice and a helping hand can do to put a struggling veteran back on their feet.

So he strives every day, even in the face of an incurable disease, to live up to his organization’s name — by aiding those who have fought for their country.

Harrison had been enamored with the military since childhood.

“I loved playing with Army toys, Army figures and I would dress up as a soldier for Halloween when I was a kid,” he said. “So there was always something there in the back of my mind. I used to love going out and playing in the woods and pretending I’m in the Army.”

Two things steered him even further toward the military in high school. He worked in the counselors’ office right next to the Army recruiter, and his older brother joined the Army. So when Harrison graduated from Wheeling Park High School in 1997, he entered the Army Reserve.

“My friends were going to Senior Week at the beach; I was going to Senior Week at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri,” he said with a laugh.

Harrison spent eight years in the Army Reserve, ultimately completing a tour of one year and one day in Iraq in 2003-04. He served with the Army Reserve’s 459th Engineer Company as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was a bridge engineer, whose unit played a critical role in the fall of Baghdad.

Harrison’s company was on the Diyala River on Baghdad’s southeast side building a vehicle bridge for American troops, and doing so under enemy fire. He was on a boat on the river — “one of only, I think, four that had a grenade launcher,” he said – holding up a piece of the bridge. During that task, he and his platoon sergeant saw a large piece of shrapnel land right next to his foot.

“And my platoon sergeant and I looked at each other and we just kind of chuckled,” he said. “It was just bizarre. So much of it seemed so surreal. It felt like a dream … or a nightmare.”

The nightmares began after Harrison returned to the United States following his tour. Upon his return, he worked at the Morgantown Vet Center as a Global War on Terrorism Outreach Worker, one of the first in the nation hired to that role. He also started work on a master’s degree at West Virginia University.

Through that time, he also had to wrestle with severe PTSD.

“I’d wake up in the middle of night, and when I’d come to, I’m standing beside my bed screaming,” he said.

While working in Morgantown in outreach, he started talking to more and more veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to counsel them. That wasn’t his primary job at the time, but those veterans were happy to have the ear of someone who understood what they were going through. In 2007, he transferred to the Wheeling Vet Center as a social worker and clinical coordinator.

Throughout that time, he continued to navigate his own overwhelming struggles. They became so crippling, he said, that he attempted suicide in 2010. He entered inpatient treatment at the VA hospital in Pittsburgh and, even while he was trying to recover, started counseling other veterans at the hospital.

It was then that others told him — and he finally realized — that he needed to focus on himself if he wanted to get back to helping others.

“There were a couple guys that were like, ‘Listen, man, you’re not a therapist here,'” he said. “‘You’ve got to take care of yourself. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you almost died. You can’t go through with everything that you’re going through trying to help these other guys out. It’s not where you are.'”

Harrison returned to the Wheeling Vet Center and, through his time there, met more veterans who were at the ends of their ropes. One, he said, had divorced and his ex-wife had taken all the children. He was living in a house, unable to pay for it and unable to work due to injuries he suffered in the military, yet he had filed for disability and was denied. He had maxed out multiple credit cards trying to stay afloat.

He told Harrison that, if he couldn’t get these issues resolved, he’d kill himself. Harrison went right to work and helped him get 100% disability. Harrison also helped other veterans who had just been released from jail take their first steps back out in the world.

“I was like, that’s it, we’ve got to do something,” Harrison said.

So he and his wife, Susan, started Helping Heroes. It began as a trio of apartments in Moundsville. The organization moved to the former Ohio Valley Medical Center campus in Wheeling, then to the basement of Center Wheeling Fellowship Church. That current headquarters is a temporary move, because Helping Heroes is in the middle of renovating the former Manufacturer’s Light & Heat Building on 16th Street into its new headquarters.

The new site will have six floors. Three will house a total of 15 transitional apartments for veterans to live in temporarily as they get back on their feet. It will house a thrift store and a military-themed coffee shop on the first floor.

Harrison credits Helping Heroes CEO R.J. Konkoleski and Susan Harrison, the organization’s chief financial officer, with keeping things humming through the building’s renovation, especially since his illness has forced him to slow down.

Harrison has been diagnosed with retinal vasculopathy with cerebral leukoencephalopathy. RCVL is a rare hereditary disease that affects only a few dozen families in the U.S. The disease attacks small blood vessels and causes progressive loss of vision and brain function. It leads to kidney and liver disease and severe lethargy.

His oldest brother died from it, as did his grandmother, aunt and uncle, all dying young. His younger brother also has the disease. There is no cure.

“I was going at 100 miles an hour,” Harrison said. “Now I’m going about 30 or 40 miles an hour. I just can’t function the way that I did.”

Harrison’s immediate goal is to see the new Helping Heroes headquarters open. It will be the culmination of years of work, and a place where veterans from all over the Ohio Valley can go for help. Harrison has been honored multiple times during his career. In 2013, the magazine Social Work Today named him one of the 10 most dedicated and deserving social workers in America. In 2018, he was named Outstanding Young West Virginian and one of 10 Outstanding Young Americans.

He thinks about all the help he has received through the years in his endeavors, much of it from fellow veterans. One did all the electrical work on the original Moundsville building. Others come by with canned goods and other items. Others donate both their time and their money.

Harrison appreciates how all that help has given veterans in need empirical evidence that the Ohio Valley appreciates their service.

“I’m proud of it,” he said. “I’m proud of what it has become.”