The Lionhearted: Rudy Reyes

TOGETHER, WE SAVE LIVES® - To some, these may be mere words, remnants of a time when companies embraced their history and delivered on their promises. At The Safariland Group we live those values every day. We live them when we empower over two thousand people to design, engineer, research and deliver our protective equipment products to those that protect us. We live them as we continuously seek new innovations to add to the premier group of Safariland brands that have been protecting law enforcement, military and security professionals for over half a century. We live them when we help save lives. From the front lines to back home, our veterans have made tremendous sacrifices for their families, their communities and our country. But the brave and determined have become increasingly lost and forgotten. The ravages of PTSD, body mutilation due to IEDs, and nightmares resounding with echoes of the battlefield are often the private hells of our returned heroes and warriors. The home that once emboldened our veterans during their most harrowing war time experiences has too often ignored or neglected them upon their return.
Every day, an average of 22 veterans take their own life, yet this disquieting statistic is rarely noted by the media or our elected leaders. The Lionhearted project visits 22 veterans from the Army, Air Force, Marines and Navy while veteran artist, Shawn Ganther expresses their untold story through art.

A 24-minute short film, and each individual art piece featuring a veteran’s combat story provides a digital channel for all Americans to celebrate these heroes. This storytelling spotlights each warriors’ experiences of courage, combat and comradery while in Afghanistan, Iraq and other active war zones. The video features interviews conducted veteran-to-veteran, as well as footage of both combat and their present-day home and work life.

These individual art pieces depicting the personal war-time experiences of our surviving warriors will be created in the colors, Red, White and Blue. The final artwork creates a 6-foot long, 350-pound mosaic of the American flag. This tribute to veterans’ stories will live forever enshrined at the National Veterans Art Museum so that their loyal self-sacrifice may become, and remain, a source of our national pride. See all the artwork at http://www.lionheartedfilm.com or visit safariland.com