10th annual Operation Song retreat at Warrior Outreach Ranch

COLUMBUS, Ga. (WTVM) -Happening over the weekend in Harris county, two non-profits joining forces for a music therapy retreat for veterans, first responders, and their families.

“Every veteran has a story, every spouse or widow of a veteran, any family member that’s lost one of the 22 that kills themselves everyday has a story. We’ve been trying to save the next life,” says Samuel Rhodes, CEO of Warrior Outreach Ranch in Fortson, Ga.

Nashville based non-profit, Operation Song, has a mission of empowering veterans through song writing. For the 10th year, the organization was at one of the first places they did a therapy retreat, Warrior Outreach Ranch.

Operation Song pairs professional songwriters with soldiers, veterans, active duty, or even family members to sit down, write, and record a song to help create long-lasting memories.

Saving lives in the 11 years of music therapy, Operation Song has produced more than 1,400 songs, free of charge to the veteran. Executive director, Mike Byer says as a veteran himself, Operation Song is magical.

“Veterans, typically, we don’t like to talk about a lot of things. We kind of keep it to ourselves, or we only talk about it to other veterans, but there’s something pretty disarming about a person sitting across from you with a guitar that wants to hear about what you have to say,” says Byer.

Lynn Langham, Doug Gill, Keesy Timmer, and Jason Sever are some of the songwriters at the weekend retreat to name a few.  Sever was paired up with Army veteran Tom Sifken. Both say the song for Sifken came all of a sudden.

“We kind of put words to music and came up with the idea of what we envisioned,” says Sifken. “Then, sooner than we later we came up with the whole idea and that’s what it became...a song.”

“All of a sudden what we like to call songwriter gold just falls out of their lips and they’ll say something that they don’t even know what they said, and it just lends itself so well to the hook that it becomes the song,” says Sever.

Judy Kempf was a little uncertain about the process at first but says it was helpful to find a thing in common with songwriter, Keesy Timmer.

“Things that we had both done , things we gone through, we could understand each other so the process came quickly the song was done by lunch,” says Kempf.

The retreat wraps up with a final performance in front of Warrior Outreach Ranch veterans’ loved ones.

It’s free for any veteran, active duty, or military family member to record a lasting memory with Operation Song. If you would like to create one someday, click here to learn more.

WATCH below to hear a little more about Operation Song and Warrior Outreach Ranch: