L.E.A.D. Academy gives back to veteran nonprofit Group

PACE — L.E.A.D. Academy recently held their annual tribute to veterans with a free dinner, singing of patriotic songs, handmade thank you cards from students, fireworks and prayer.

“This year we did something special,” said Melanie Perritt, an administrator at the school. “We held a penny-war competition between all our grades. In one week our kids raised $1,919.22, and we presented a check to Crowned for Ashes.”

Crowned for Ashes, a non-profit named after a verse in the book of Isaiah in the Bible, was created to provide support to wounded, ill and injured veterans and active-duty service members of the U. S. Armed Forces and their families, as well as widows through respite retreats, fellowship and opportunities for recreation on Florida’s emerald coast.

Ashley Cochrane and her late husband Chris started the nonprofit group in 2014. His widow is now executive director of the organization.

Capt. Cochrane was an Air Force pilot turned intelligence officer after he was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in 2008.

In 2013, while deployed to Africa, he became ill and was diagnosed with bacterial endocarditis, an aggressive infection of the heart valves, which caused him to have two strokes.

“The right side of his body was paralyzed and he could not speak,” Cochrane said. “We lived out of hospitals for six months.”

They had only been married for a year and a half.

“It was not an option for me to leave. But it was very hard,” she says.

It took her husband a year before he could speak in sentences and learn to walk again, and he was medically retired.

“We went from being man and wife to being warrior and caretaker,” Cochrane said of their relationship.

They returned to the Gulf Coast and when things got stressful, they would often go out into nature on the shores of the water.

“We searched and prayed for two years to find the right property,” Cochrane said.

The couple bought the property for Crowned for Ashes and were set to complete the dream of helping others like them.

On March 19, 2018, her husband suffered a massive heart attack in his sleep and passed away.

“Several months after his death I found a note he had written in a book,” Cochrane said. “’My strokes made me the Christian I am,’ was all it said.”

Reading that note gave her comfort.

Shortly after finding the note, Cochrane said she woke up in the middle of the night because God was telling her what she needed to do.

“I got out of bed and wrote four pages worth of notes on how to build this retreat for wounded veterans and widows,” she said.

Crowned for Ashes received their nonprofit status from the state of Florida in March of this year. Cochrane has started fundraising to build a facility that can accommodate six couples, or 12 widows, at one time to work on their relationships and give them respite from their care taker roles.

For more information or if you would like to donate, go to www.crownedforashes.org.