David Bates, the founder of Warriors Way, demonstrates how veterans, first responders and children put a heated piece of steel onto an anvil before hammering it out. The organization helps people make knives, free of charge, as a way to work through post traumatic stress disorder.
David Trinko/The Lima News
SHAWNEE TOWNSHIP — Hammering hot steel can mend a broken person, David Bates learned.
Bates starting making knives as a hobby in 2016 at the urging of his wife, after coming back to the United States after three tours in Iraq in the military.
“Being a stationary veteran isn’t a good thing, mental health-wise,” said Bates, the founder of Warriors Way, a nonprofit that offers recreational blacksmithing programs to veterans, first responders and children.
Bates was a local recipient of the Jefferson Awards for Public Service based on his work with Warriors Way, a 501(c)3 charitable organization. He and eight other winners will be honored at a ceremony March 26 at Veterans Memorial Civic Center in downtown Lima.
Bates found how the purpose-driven, repetitive actions in knife-making helped him with his own post-traumatic stress disorder. Being a soldier has those same kinds of purpose-driven, repetitive actions, but civilian life doesn’t offer as much structure. Participants create their own knives, free of charge. Warriors Way raises funds to support its mission, including through the United Way of Greater Lima.
“When you’re working with something that’s 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, you’re hyper-focused on one thing,” Bates said. “So that gives your brain time to go on vacation.”
Over time, it helped him with his own anxiety. Before long, other veterans began making knives alongside him, and Warriors Way, online at WarriorsWay.org, has grown steadily ever since its founding. In 2020, 70 people went through the program. Last year, there were 250 participants. They’re on track for more than 600 in 2024.
The veterans in the program also know they can call Bates anytime if they’re feeling suicidal. He’ll open the shop at its current location on Fort Shawnee Road, which opened in 2020, no matter the hour and just be there for his brother in arms.
“We’ve had 28 veterans reach out to us for the peer support,” Bates said. “If it’s 2, 3 o’clock in the morning, whenever it is, if they need help, they reach out, and I live right down the road from the shop. I’ll get everything going for them.
“Every day we have roughly 22 veterans commit suicide. There are over 320 veterans who’ve died right here in Ohio in a year. So we’re just trying to help with that fight. It’s something important.”
The group has five stations at its current shop, including five anvils sponsored by the friend of someone who killed himself. They also have two 16-ton presses to help youth and handicapped people who can’t swing a hammer. Instead of using propane torches, they’ve switched to induction forges to heat the steel, which is a safer method.
Warriors Way expanded to include first responders, since they also deal with PTSD. They also added youth classes after Bates’ own daughter showed an interest and the benefits of making her own knife.
The group dreams of moving out of a rented space now into its own permanent home. All donations go back to the core mission, and everyone involved volunteers their time.
It’s impressive to see what’s come of Warriors Way, said Jeffrey Dauterman, who nominated Bates for the Jefferson Awards and volunteers with the group even though he’s not a veteran himself.
“They talk about their war stories. The same blood, the same mud is true in this building,” Dauterman said, “There’s a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood that comes from them. You don’t explain yourself. You’re just accepted and understood.”
Serving as the nonprofit’s leader, Bates witnessed his own growth. He once struggled with groups larger than 15 people after seeing how large groups became targets in the military. Through exposure therapy, he’s pushed his own bounds, to the point he went to a blade show in Atlanta with a thousand people in the same room.
Whatever size the organization becomes, for Bates it’s always about the one-to-one interactions with fellow veterans.
“If there’s the ability to save one veteran, that’s where I get that drive from,” Bates said. “You get these guys who come here that are really low, and we have that shared experiences of me as a veteran who’s been in the same spot.”
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See more Jefferson Awards profiles between now and March 26 at LimaOhio.com/tag/jefferson.
Reach David Trinko at 567-242-0467 or on Twitter @Lima_Trinko.
