COAL VALLEY, Ill. — When Clay Merritt left the Army, he wasn't sure what his purpose was. Serving in the Army was what he always wanted to do.
Merritt was a Cavalry Scout in Iraq. He suffered several traumatic brain injuries while serving.
"My Humvee was hit by 11 different IEDs," he said. "My head would bounce into the side of the glass, bulletproof glass on the side of my truck... That was probably the worst that happened to me. My personality changed after that particular injury, and that was the beginning of it."
He describes it as "life changing."
"I feel like everything before my brain injury is like stained glass, but it was shattered," Merritt said. "I can see pieces of my old life. But I can't put it into context. Because it's just, I mean, it's wrecked. And so like I used to be good at English. And now I'm good at math."
Like many veterans, Merritt found himself suffering from PTSD when he left the Army in 2013.
"I had to numb all my emotions to get through combat," he said. "It was something that I couldn't turn off now. And so I tried to do all the stuff that I enjoyed. It seemed like the more that I used to enjoy something, the less I enjoyed it now. And it actually would make me sad to try and do things I used to enjoy."
He decided to try and new hobby and began teaching himself about blacksmithing. He made hunting knives for his friends, tools and bottle opener keychains.
"I think that it gave me something to find the purpose in and then something to do," Merritt said. "If I couldn't sleep at night, I could read stuff online."
He uses old pieces of scrap metal and forges them into something new.
"I figured it was sort of an analogy to soldiers that are totally lost once they get out of the Army, or any branch of service really, and are no longer able to perform the function that they were made for," Merritt said. "But anything can be remade and do something different. And so that was what I wanted to share with people."
It started with one of his neighbors who's a detective. Merritt said he'd responded to a murder scene and he knew the victims.
"I was like, dude, come hammer with me and then we'll go sit in my backyard and just talk," he said. "And he felt better after doing that."
From there, Merritt began inviting other veterans over. Now, he's starting a nonprofit called Second Chance Forge.
The goal is to offer free blacksmithing classes to veterans, active military personnel and first responders. People who don't fit into those categories could pay to take a class too and their class fee would go toward equipment and metal stock.
"Honestly, blacksmithing is a great thing, but I think that it's the bonds that people can build while doing it that are even better," Merritt said. "Even if it's something as (simple as) a keychain, when people feel like 'Oh, I used to have this purpose, and this was my value, and now I have nothing and there's no point,' you can pull out your keys and see your little bottle opener or whatever it is that you make and be like, 'This is something that I did, I can turn steel into something useful.'"
Merritt will be at the Freight House Farmers Market Fall Fest this weekend if you are interested in getting involved.