Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and raised in Alexandria, Virginia, around military families, Ken Falke joined the Navy Ceremonial Guard in 1981 in order to honor Veterans after he failed the Navy SEAL vision test.
In January 1982, Falke helped pull out wreckage and recover remains at the Potomac River site of the Air Florida Flight 90 plane crash. His fascination with the Navy divers’ work recovering victims and parts of aircraft, along with his hard work, impressed one of the divers’ leaders into mentioning that they could use someone like Falke at EOD. He thus transferred to the Poseidon U.S. Naval submarine base at Holy Loch, Scotland, in 1983, plunging into a grueling year of EOD training, where each member had to be qualified in diving, parachuting and working with chemical weapons.
Falke served 19 years in Navy EOD. He would go on to make over 1,000 parachute jumps and roughly as many dives. He also led crew on thousands of high-risk operations, including many in support of Navy SEAL Teams and U.S. Army Special Forces.
After 21 years in the Navy, Falke retired and began the nonprofit EOD Warrior Foundation in 2004 with his wife, Julia, by donating 37 acres and millions of dollars toward supporting severely wounded bomb disposal members’ families so they could stay together during treatment. He also studied how to help the families he hosted to attain healthy and purposeful lives, filled with meaning, connection and growth in the aftermath of trauma. This “posttraumatic growth,” as he called it, came to define him after returning from a broken back in a March 1989 parachute jump that nearly ended his career.
In 2013, Falke started the Boulder Crest Foundation, the first privately funded wellness center dedicated exclusively to trauma-experiencing Veterans and first responders, as well as their families. Here, he offers warriors a framework that helps them live up to the Greek and Roman definition of hero, and the one he has personally embraced: “An ordinary person that endured an extraordinary experience who then returns to share the lessons they learned, so that they can enrich the lives of others.”
We honor his service.
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Writer: Michelle A. Shade
Editor: Ethan Oleson
Researcher: Jacoryn Whatley
Graphic Designer: Leon Saul
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