FREDERICKSBURG, Virginia—Steve Hotz started Black Horse Forge, a nonprofit organization that provides support for veterans, active-duty military personnel, and first responders through the ancient art of blacksmithing.

The retired sergeant, who served 17 years in the 82nd Airborne Division of the U.S. Army, said he started the endeavor to teach the arts of blacksmithing, toolmaking. and bladesmithing first to heal himself and then others who had brought ghosts home from war.

Hotz’s decision to join the military happened in the heat of an I’ll-show-my-boss moment: He was an interior designer, and she was giving him the business for reasons he cannot recall now. He walked across the street to get lunch, saw the Army recruiting office next door, went in, and enlisted. Two weeks later, he was in Fort Benning.

The military suited him well, Hotz said. It was when he was doing special work with the North Carolina Counterdrug Program on a counterterrorist team that he got hurt. He was left blind in one eye and required surgery on his back to fuse his spine.

It also left him trying to cope with the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Back in civilian life, he found that he was not unlike fellow retired military and first responders who struggled to regain the ideal of purpose. He went to a Wounded Warrior event where there was a blacksmith demonstration.

“When I came back, I made a hook,” he said. “That is all I made that night. I was so excited about making this hook. My wife’s like, ‘Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it,'” after seeing that thousand-yard stare ease from his face.

It was an interaction with a Marine at another Wounded Warrior........

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