Winchester, Virginia (November 9, 2024) — For Veterans Day, the nonprofit Freedom Alliance and U.S. Bank wanted to thank a former member of the military but felt that words were insufficient, so they gave him a $40,000 truck.
“I feel unworthy but very grateful,” U.S. Army veteran Michael “Dylan” Thomas said Friday in downtown Winchester after being handed the keys to a 2020 Dodge Ram 1500 pickup.
The giveaway took place Friday morning before more than 50 attendees who gathered outside Freedom Alliance’s headquarters at 25 W. Piccadilly St. Among the guest speakers was Winchester Mayor David Smith, who noted his appreciation of the U.S. military and the men and women who defend America.
“You guys keep us free and safe, and I really appreciate that,” Smith said, directing his comments to Thomas. “There’s no one more deserving of this honor and this privilege that’s going to be bestowed on you today.”
“Our veterans and service members give everything for our collective freedom,” added John Pirich, an assistant vice president and regional manager of U.S. Bank.
Thomas, a Tennessee native who enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2004, walked a challenging path before joining the military.
According to Thomas Kilgannon, president of Freedom Alliance, “He grew up in an environment in which addiction was in his home at the parental level. At a very young age, he was forced to be a provider and a protector for himself and his younger brother.”
By the time he was 11, Thomas and his family were homeless and living on the streets. A distant relative helped to get his nephew into a program at a boys’ ranch in Tennessee, where Thomas lived in exchange for helping out with chores, tending to livestock, operating agricultural machinery and other duties.
“The very first night that he spent at that ranch was the first night in his life that he recalls sleeping on a clean mattress on a bed frame in a secure environment,” Kilgannon said. “The next day, he was given three pairs of pants, which tripled his wardrobe.”
When Thomas was a sophomore in high school, he watched the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on TV and decided then and there to join the Army. He enlisted when he was 17 as part of the Army’s delayed entry program, then was shipped off to basic training at Fort Benning (now Fort Moore) in Georgia when he turned 18.
Thomas became a medical logistics specialist and deployed twice to Basra, Iraq, where he helped to protect convoys transporting medical supplies throughout the embattled country.
“He was in a lot of firefights during his time,” Kilgannon said. “There were a lot of IEDs (improvised explosive devices); the roads were littered with explosives.”
During his two tours in Iraq, there were two separate occasions where mortar strikes knocked Thomas out and caused minor brain injuries, Kilgannon said.
After Thomas was honorably discharged from the Army in the fall of 2012 with the rank of sergeant, he got treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and his brain injuries, then became a deputy with the Cass County Sheriff’s Office in Michigan.
After five years as a deputy, Kilgannon said Thomas left to volunteer at the boys’ ranch in Tennessee that had pulled him out of homelessness. He eventually became a paid employee there and lived at the ranch with his growing family for three years.
Last year, the Thomas family moved to a similar ranch in Morgantown, West Virginia, called Chestnut Mountain Ranch. Thomas and his wife, Abbi, work at the ranch and live there with their four children — Blakeley, 12; Coralee, 10; Emalynn, 8; and Waylon, 5 — in a home located on the 300-acre property.
Kilgannon said one of Freedom Alliance’s missions is to provide military veterans with free vehicles “for their rehabilitation, medical appointments and personal needs. All of these vehicles are given in partnership with U.S. Bank.”
Thomas said he’ll use his new truck at Chestnut Mountain Ranch to help with the teenage boys who reside there after escaping troubled childhoods similar to his.
“Our whole basis is taking young men hunting, getting them outdoors, hiking,” he said.
Pirich noted that Freedom Alliance and U.S. Bank have given away a total of 51 vehicles to veterans as part of the organizations’ joint Driven to Serve program.
Freedom Alliance is a national nonprofit that helps and supports wounded troops and military families. It has awarded more than $25 million in college scholarships to children of heroes killed or disabled in military service and spent millions more helping injured veterans and their families with outdoor therapy trips, retreats, care packages, mortgage-free homes, all-terrain chairs and more. To learn more, visit FreedomAlliance.org
U.S. Bank is headquartered in Minneapolis and serves millions of customers locally, nationally and globally through its consumer, business, commercial, institutional and investment banking programs. Learn more at usbank.com.
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