FIRST ANNUAL BRAZOS RIVER AIRBOAT FLY FISHING RUN FOR WOUNDED VETERANS

One wounded veteran came up to me and said �This is great, this is wonderful, these people make me feel appreciated.� Another injured veteran smiled a huge smile and put his hand on my shoulder and said �This is the most relaxed I�ve been in two months.� They were talking about being the guests of airboaters on the Brazos River.

Families aren�t always people related by birth. Some families are people related by shared experience. One such family is that of wounded and recovering veterans. They go to a hostile land where a very large number of people are organized solely around the desire to kill them. Too many of them get killed and too many get injured. The injured come home, try to heal and fit back into a society that often seems to be purposely ignoring them. Who can they really relate to? Each other. And so they become a family.

There�s another family that reached out to them, offering a hand of decency, actively showing them that there are those that truly appreciate them. This family is known as the Brazos River Airboat Club � known as BRAB for short. This family isn�t a family of birth relatives either, this family is bound together by shared values, and some of those values are expressed in owning and operating airboats.

One of those values is a true appreciation for the sacrifice our men and women in uniform make. This family, BRAB, invited these veterans out for a day of thrills riding airboats interspersed with long moments of serenity while fly fishing.
The BRAB family took these wounded veterans up and down the Brazos River, between Lake Whitney and Waco. They zoomed and zipped and made these men smile, big smiles, great-big-toothy-smiles.
And in between the zooming and zipping were stops at some...

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It looks like everyone had a great time on the water! I know the Vets enjoyed riding in the airboats.

It was a kick-[censored] day for everyone involved!

It was a great day. After a few casting lessons most of the guys were able to catch fish.

Guys really glad it went good hope it becomes an annual event. I cannot believe after four months off I ended up having to go back to work the day before this happened. I really hope everybody involved was able to learn something from everyone next to them! Good times