OMAHA — The scene was seared into John Folsom’s mind.
On a visit to Bethesda Naval Hospital around 2010, he met a young soldier severely brain-damaged by a war device that exploded near his head during a mission in Iraq.
The patient’s mom was at his bedside, holding her son’s hand. He was unable to speak, but his eyes seemed to light up when a guitarist started to serenade a familiar tune, recalled Folsom, a retired U.S. Marine colonel. Also a parent, Folsom couldn’t shake his worry for the impaired soldier’s future, wondering what would happen once aging caretaker parents were gone.
“I call it my epiphany,” said Folsom, a Nebraskan who recently relocated to Florida. “That’s what moved me to say, ‘We’ve got to do something here.’ It’s taken years and years and years … ”…