Isaiah 6:8

Mission

To the ones who carried it home...

For twenty-five years, I answered questions about that morning — the scramble, the order, the sky. But the story I needed to tell began after I landed. Nickel on the Grass exists to say out loud what no camera captured: some missions last hours, but their consequences last decades. I wrote it for the ones who came home carrying something they couldn't name, the spouses who stood beside them, the children who loved someone fighting a battle they couldn't see. I wrote it because the person closest to me said I needed to. I was trained to hold on — to control, to endure, to solve problems; and never let go…

Faith asked something entirely different.

Surrender.

Not surrender as defeat, but surrender as trust.

At the center of this story isn't a fighter pilot. It's a man discovering that courage, discipline, and strength can only carry him so far. Eventually, he must accept grace. This isn't a film that preaches. It's a film that quietly proposes that God does not waste suffering, and that redemption often begins where our own strength ends. Take faith out of this story, and there is no story left — only a wound.

In 2022, my wife told me to apply for the Writers Guild Foundation's Veterans Writing Project, a year long mentorship for military veterans. I pushed back, but she gently persisted. Then I got selected. I didn't think I belonged there. I certainly didn't realize what God was about to do. I thought I was learning how to write a screenplay. Instead, I was learning how to heal. And I didn't do it alone. Under the mentorship of Chris Roessner, Adair Cole, and Nick Hawthorne - working writers who gave me their craft and their patience — Nickel on the Grass became what it is. They didn't just sharpen the script. They changed what I understood a writer to be.

You see, my wife knew that for twenty years I had carried stories I didn't know what to do with. Writing Nickel on the Grass became something I never anticipated: therapy, catharsis, and eventually, grace. As a Catholic, I believe that God redeems what He doesn't prevent - that He can take a wound and make it a vocation. I no longer see Nickel on the Grass as simply a film. I see it as a gift I didn't know I needed.

If this story can help one veteran, one spouse, one son or daughter, one first responder, one lukewarm believer, or one person quietly carrying an invisible burden realize they are not alone, then it will have done far more than entertain. It will have become an act of service.