SAVANNAH, Georgia — Tyler Merritt has taken the saying “It takes a village to raise a child” and turned it a bit sideways. He’s building a village, literally, to allow adults to raise themselves up. His village is a stabilizing rail, or a stepping stone to a better life.
Merritt, a former special operations air mission commander, is trying to help his military brothers and sisters who have found themselves post-military service one paycheck away from financial collapse, as well as those struggling to find their way through modern civilian life, which does not begin and end with a stated purpose in the way military service does.
“Our most recent initiative is our veterans village,” said Merritt, whose post-military life makes him an unlikely entrepreneur and philanthropist as the CEO of Nine Line Apparel and president of Nine Line Foundation.
