A few years ago, Army veteran and military spouse Jenna Brown was in Alabama for a Spartan Race when she entered an elevator with a stranger and noticed he was wearing a bright red t-shirt representing an organization she was very familiar with: Team Red, White & Blue (Team RWB).
Brown had a special attachment to the organization — a nonprofit health and wellness community for the military-connected community — from her time stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia. She credits her improved run time, which during her 10 years of military service had always hovered just above the maximum time allowed, to her frequent running with the Team RWB chapter there towards the end of her career.
“It was huge, it was active, there was something to do constantly, and those people ended up being some of my closest friends,” Brown told Reserve + National Guard Magazine. “I wanted that where I was going in Baton Rouge.”
Building a Team RWB chapter
The stranger in the elevator told her that he was the former Team RWB chapter captain in Baton Rouge, where Brown was living with her family after she transitioned out of the military.
Once informed that a chapter existed, Brown connected with the current lead. She eventually had to build a functioning local chapter herself, and started by organizing weekend runs along the Mississippi River levee.
Brown wanted active meet-ups, but “… nobody ever showed up except for one girl who was essentially passing off the chapter captain to me. She came that first time and then never came again.”
Michael “Sal” Salazar, Team RWB veteran engagement manager for the southern region, said even being able to impact one individual is a success the organization recognizes.
“I will be blatantly honest, isolation upon exit of military service, that is a very tough pill to swallow, and it’s a reality,” Salazar said.
Brown organized monthly veteran lunches just to get vets together, and then shifted lunches to breakfasts to boost turnout and routine. Then about two years ago, Team RWB began paying for the breakfasts, which formalized them as official Team RWB “social” events.
“The two things that people miss when they exit service are their sense of purpose and the people that they served with, and so we want to be able to introduce that to them again prior to exit of service,” Salazar said. “We can embed them into a real community and get them to be a part of that community and have that sense of belonging.”
Creating a ‘welcome’ space
For Army National Guard veteran Kevin Sellers, involvement with Team RWB came about when he joined a weekly run meetup in Lafayette, Louisiana. He enjoyed it so much that he took over sustaining the event long-term as the third chapter lead for the area in 11 years.
“Every Thursday night, it’s a place where people know that they’re welcome,” Sellers told Reserve + National Guard Magazine.
Sellers credits a lot of what drove him to be a successful leader and become so good at bridging a community to when he was a teenager. He and his high school sweetheart at the time, Bonnie, made the difficult decision to place their firstborn son, Luke, up for adoption.
Eighteen months later, Sellers and Bonnie met Luke and began weaving his adoptive family into their own lives. Today, Luke and his wife Kaylee show up at Team RWB events, running races and cheering on veterans alongside Sellers’ other three sons.
The same instinct that led Sellers to invite a loving circle around Luke’s adoption while honoring everyone’s role now shows in how he leads his chapter: consistent, welcoming and focused on giving people a place to belong.
Building and leading chapters
Salazar said Team RWB, which promotes a healthy lifestyle for veterans based on the four pillars of physical health, mental health, genuine relationships, and a sense of purpose, is largely run by quality volunteers like Brown and Sellers, who strive to forge communities. The organization operates through approximately 157 chapters across the country and one overseas chapter.
Multiple chapters are managed and led by a state coordinator, and entire regions — west, south, and northeast — are each managed and led by one of the three veteran engagement managers, like Salazar.
“Our boots-on-the-ground Eagle leaders are the ones that make things happen, and so my job is I resource them, I inform them, I teach, I coach, I mentor as much as possible, and I try to get out to as many places as I possibly can,” Salazar said.
“It’s been fun and challenging to get people motivated, but very rewarding,” Sellers told Reserve + National Guard Magazine. “Every year we get better.”
In Louisiana, Team RWB’s impact comes down to two kinds of leaders: those like Brown, who build entirely new communities where they had previously failed, and those like Sellers, who fight to keep a long-running chapter alive one weekly meetup at a time. Together, their stories show what it really takes to start a chapter, but also to keep one going, year after year, for the sake of the veterans who rely on it.
“For me, it was about having that community and having those people that understood what we were going through,” Brown said.
Finding ‘the magic’
In September, Sellers and Brown plan to get their chapters — separated by about 60 miles across the Atchafalaya Basin — together for a 9/11 stair climb event. As far as an upcoming national event, wear blue: run to remember and Team RWB announced One Flag Forward. Beginning September 12, one American flag will travel 250 miles from New York City to Washington, D.C., carried hand-to-hand by members.
Salazar emphasized encouragement, and said that Team RWB inclines no judgment for participants’ athletic prowess.
“I could not be more honest when I say this: I couldn’t care less if you can run 100 miles or you’re winded when you walk to your mailbox,” he said. “I’m here to meet you where you’re at and take you where you want to go in your journey, and be with you every step of the way. That’s the important thing with our organization: you’re not doing this alone, you’re going to do it with somebody else, and that’s where the magic happens.”
Find out more about Team RWB at their website or by connecting with a local chapter captain. Veterans can get a free red Team RWB t-shirt when they complete the Enriched Life Scale survey on the Team RWB app.