Homes For Our Troops building a future for wounded Marine's family

Wounded in Afghanistan, retired Marine from Stow to receive free home
Ohio.com
By Jim Carney
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published: November 20, 2013

Through the Massachusetts-based nonprofit Homes for Our Troops, a retired Marine from Stow and his family are about to move into a renovated home in Texas — at no cost to them.

Nick Eckley did not want to leave the Marines — “It is a brotherhood like no other,” he said — but after being seriously wounded in Afghanistan on March 23, 2011, he eventually was medically retired.

He called receiving the free home “a blessing to be recognized for the wounds I suffered in Afghanistan.”

Joining Eckley in the home in the suburban Houston town of Cypress will be his wife, Madison “Madi” Eckley, a former Marine who is expecting the couple’s third child, and their two daughters: MaKenna, 3, and Raegan, 1.

The home was a foreclosure that J.P. Morgan Chase bank completely remodeled at no cost to the family. Eckley, 24, joined the Marines in the spring of his senior year at Stow-Munroe Falls High School and left for boot camp at Parris Island, S.C., in August 2007.

He had completed three overseas tours as part of a Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team (FAST) before he was deployed to Afghanistan in February 2011.

In a roadside bombing, he suffered a traumatic brain injury, took shrapnel to his leg, back, face and hands, suffered slipped discs and a 50 percent hearing loss in one ear as well as vision problems.

Eckley said he has undergone 17 surgeries with several more planned. He said he has experienced some cognitive losses and post-traumatic stress after the injury for which he was awarded a Purple Heart.
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