KILLEEN, Texas (FOX 44) – Two Veteran brothers started a skydiving company after serving a combined 33 years in the military with multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Baghdad, Scott and Anthony Mascheck were in mutually supporting areas on mission, but didn’t know until after the fact.

In Anthony’s third deployment, he was injured in a firefight taking gunshots to the leg, the military flew him back to the states and ended up amputating his leg.

“We spent two and a half years at Walter Reed up in DC trying to recover from all of his injuries in Iraq. And I mean, it was tough for him. He but he’s so positive and resilient,” says Scott Mascheck.

The Mascheck family aims to focus on the future and not the pains of the present, skydiving helps them do that. But it was Scott who discovered his love for skydiving first.

“I was personally looking for thrill, excitement and adrenaline. And it was it was a surprise to me because I found the opposite. I found peace and quiet and my brain was able to go silent and think about only the moment,” says Scott Mascheck and shortly after introduced Anthony to the sport.

“We have to learn. We have to learn how to do this. This is this is our future,” says Scott. The brothers decided to buy and revamp the business from previous ownership, making it Skydive Skylark.

Many veterans experience skydiving thanks to local grants and charities, as a tool to help them find peace, “I’ve seen several of our veterans get off the medications and be able to find a new path, treating their PTSD, treating their anxieties, depressions, and many of them with injuries that didn’t know they could do something like this and found out they could,” says Scott.

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“These are things we did and these are things we live through, but it’s not who we are. It’s fine to go and find that next path, that next step. We can’t just get lost in the past forever,” says Scott.