Country singer Brantley Gilbert recently lost three different friends and US veterans from KIA, Cancer, and a work accident, and being able to honor them was something that touched the Til Valhalla Project and its founder Korey Shaffer personally.
Shaffer, a US veteran himself who originally started his company to help himself deal with the pain of trying to cope with the many losses he was dealing with from those fallen at war or back home from suicide, could relate to exactly what Brantley was going through.
“When I first started making plaques for families of Fallen Heroes, I would look around and watch the news for any recent Heroes to honor. My buddy Coleman had mentioned that Brantley Gilbert has lost several friends and that we should make a plaque for him. In Brantley’s song, “One Hell Of An Amen,” he shows the friends he has lost, and it spoke to me. So we built a single plaque to honor them all. Then, we took it to social media to find a way to get it home. One of his friends, Kyle, saw the post and said he would deliver the plaque to him. We sent them both shirts and the memorial plaque. The next thing I know, I’m working at my desk and I get a call from Brantley Gilbert thanking us for the plaque. We talked for a while and he told me about his friends and how he lost them. Then he said he was going to hang the plaque up in his cabin. All in all – he was a phenomenal person who went the extra mile for the Til Valhalla Project and we can’t thank him enough for it. Since then we have made great friends with Kyle and everyone is better because of it!”
Shaffer and his team at TVP, known for creating plaques free of charge for fallen soldiers, first responders and others for their families, put together a special item for Brantley to have.
Speaking to us here directly about hearing from Brantley after he received the plaque, Shaffer told us, “Having Brantley personally call me to say thank you was a surreal experience. It was an eye-opening moment when you realize that you don’t need to be a huge company to get a reaction from celebrities, just need to have good intentions and drive. Seeing that picture of him holding his memorial was insane to see something we worked so hard on in the hands of a celebrity!”
And while giving Brantley something to remember his friends by was a surreal moment, Shaffer doesn’t plan on stopping there. “We are upping our plaque production to 120 plaques a month this year (2022)! And going forward with other notable people, I would love to partner with Coffee Anderson because we use his music in all of our plaque delivery TikTok’s. My goal would be to have him help us deliver memorials nationwide.”
What Shaffer and his company are doing is truly extraordinary, and as Brantley recently said on social media after the passing of one of his friends, “Y’all be sure to hold the ones you love a little tighter and cherish the time you have together.”
One Hell Of An Amen to that!
