DICKSON CITY -- At any given time of day, you're likely to see someone working inside an old bank on Main Street in Dickson City. And chances are, that person will be Dave Ragan - an Army veteran taking on his latest mission.
Soon, the bank will be the brick and mortar home of Veterans Promise. An organization Ragan founded last year. It's meant to connect veterans like him with services and with each other.
Veterans Promise has been hosting group therapy sessions for veterans with PTSD over the past year.
"Those doctorates on the wall really don't mean that much to us. We want the validation between our service, and it kind of lets us take our armor off and become human again, in a sense. That's what we want to do here," Ragan said.
Ragan said the place will be drug and alcohol free, designed for vets' families, too.
He said they plan to have a notary on staff to help vets with paperwork and someone who can help write resumes and fill out job applications.
"I would like to have a facility like this in every community, so that we can do what we're doing here and take the success that we're having here and transplant it all over the country and give all veterans and their families a place to go," he added.
Veterans Promise was born out of a dark time in Ragan's life when he struggled with the invisible scars of his own service in Bosnia and Iraq. He's building the place he knows now that he needed.
"Our failures are not our finale and truly, that's how I live," Ragan said.
You can support Veterans Promise by buying a t-shirt from the organization's Facebook page.