Chris Jeans, Bill Arnold ’90, and Ben Bias, all veterans of the U.S. Marine Corps, after jumping with the All American Parachute Team in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2023.
“It’s a calling. It’s a passion. It’s a duty that I feel as though I have it on my shoulders to ensure that all of our vets live happy and long lives in peace, because I believe that they’ve earned that.”
That’s how Bill Arnold ’90, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who deployed to Iraq in 2004–05 and fought in the Second Battle of Fallujah, explains his work with Blue Diamond Recreation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting veterans’ physical and mental health through outdoor recreation, a mentorship program, and more. On Nov. 10, 2025, Arnold’s work was recognized with a service award from the National Medal of Honor Museum in Arlington, Texas.
Blue Diamond began, though, with an all-too-common tragedy. In 2022, Arnold was returning from the funeral of a Marine he’d commanded in Iraq when the vision that would become Blue Diamond began to take shape in his mind. The recently deceased veteran had committed suicide, and his was not the first such funeral that Arnold had attended in the years since the global war on terror wound down. Immediately, he knew it was time to end his 28-year career as a high school teacher and principal and focus his attention elsewhere.
“I don’t know if it was God talking to me or whatever, but I had this epiphany that I needed to do something different to help folks that were suffering the effects of war,” said Arnold. Soon, he’d resigned from his position at Fort Worth Country Day School in his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, and began building a program designed to support veterans, particularly those from recent wars.
Mike Smith (left), a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who fought in the Second Battle of Fallujah, with Bill Arnold ’90 off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 2023.
Much of Blue Diamond’s work unfolds in the great outdoors, a setting known for its healing effects. “I take people hiking on the Appalachian Trail,” Arnold commented. “We go to Big Bend National Park a couple of times a year, parachute jumps, and things like that. But, but to be honest, many of the folks that I work with don’t have the physical capabilities to do those activities. So sometimes it might just be sitting at the park, talking. Several just like to go on walks, long walks, and talk and have coffee.”
With that individualized approach, Arnold has built relationships with 46 veterans and their families, and he happily notes that, so far, Blue Diamond’s retention rate is 100%.
“There are thousands of veterans’ organizations out there, and I think we all complement one another, but I’ve chosen to focus on depth rather than breadth,” Arnold explained. “I know a lot of organizations say, ‘Yeah, we have 200,000 people.’ I haven’t figured out how that could possibly be effective … and relationships can’t be rushed. It takes hundreds of hours per individual in order to develop friendships and build the trust they need. I applaud these gigantic organizations that do all this really high-profile stuff, but I found that I have a niche that’s proven to be necessary, as well.”
As he fills that niche, one veteran at a time, Arnold draws on the lessons he learned at VMI—particularly those reflecting the value of a unified effort.
“I learned the power of mutual support among friends, roommates, classmates, brother rats, things like that,” he stated. “That, if we’re alone, it’s very, very rare that we can accomplish much, but when we’re together, we can get a lot of things done.”
That sense of shared responsibility and purpose drives Blue Diamond—and a yearning for that connection propelled a teenage Arnold halfway across the country when it was time to choose a college.
Bill Arnold ’90 leads a group of veterans, including Chuck Ellis ’90 and Chip McWilliams ’90, on a quail hunt at Bear Creek Lodge in Dry Branch, Georgia, in 2024.
Growing up in a family with a strong tradition of military service, Arnold always felt a calling to serve, and thanks to the outreach of two alumni—Thad Smith ’73 (now deceased) and Bob Crotty ’73—he found his way to VMI, where he double majored in history and English and held rank, culminating as Company G commander in his 1st Class year. At graduation, he commissioned into the U.S. Marine Corps and served for 4 years before leaving active duty and becoming a high school teacher.
Then, the terrorist attacks of 09/11 prompted a round of soul-searching, and after entering the Marine Corps Reserve, Arnold was deployed to Iraq, where he served for a year before returning to Texas and civilian employment. He was comfortably settled in his longtime role as an educator when he again felt a calling—this time to live in service to those who’d served their nation.
Going forward, Arnold would like to broaden Blue Diamond’s outreach to include more family members. “I’d like to increase the number of peer support retreats to include the children of veterans,” he stated. “In an age-appropriate fashion, they need to understand the sacrifices that their mom or dad gave for their country.” He added that support for spouses is also needed because spouses can suffer from a veteran’s mental health challenges, and divorce is very common in the veteran community.
For Arnold, giving back is just doing the right thing, as generations of VMI alumni have done before him. “None of us really owns anything,” he commented. “We’re just sort of passing through this life. We’ve got to leave it a little bit better than we found it, and that’s what our forebearers at VMI believed, as well. People build bridges and never have a chance to cross them—they still need to build those bridges.”
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