Heroes Media Group | Tampa, Fla.
For the tenth straight year, the All Heroes Open brought veterans, volunteers, and fishing captains together on Tampa Bay for a weekend built entirely around service members making the jump from military to civilian life.
It started Friday night.
Friday Night: The Heroes Welcome Party
The weekend kicked off at Molly’s Irish Pub on Davis Islands, where the 10th Annual Heroes Welcome Party set the tone: food, drinks, raffles, and reunions. Old friends and old units crossed paths again, laughter carried across the tables, and transitioning service members got welcomed into a community that keeps showing up long after the weekend ends.
Who Team ADDO Is
James Boggs spent 20 years in uniform, a Marine Corps air traffic controller and recruiter who deployed with 1st Marine Division during OIF 1, then an Army Warrant Officer and UH-60 MEDEVAC pilot who flew missions in Iraq and Afghanistan before retiring at Fort Bragg. When he came home, he built Team ADDO, the name Latin for “to inspire, to give, to bring” a veteran-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit aimed at one job: making sure other service members land on their feet.
Ask Boggs what it takes to put on an event like this for ten straight years, and he doesn’t hesitate.
“If you look at the people that are walking through the doors, you’re hearing conversations, you’re seeing people listening to stories, and you’re just hearing the laughter,” Boggs told Heroes Media Group. “It’s the people. At the end of the day, anything I do, it’s the people. You have to have amazing people that want to support.”
Boggs is quick to spread that credit to Robin Conley, who has run the tournament’s operations for eight of its ten years and, in his words, “knows all the captains, knows the ins and outs, the idiosyncrasies of putting a fishing tournament on” and to the volunteers who return year after year.
What the Money Supports: The Veterans Closet
Every dollar raised this weekend goes back into Team ADDO’s programs for veterans in transition and none is more beloved than the Veterans Closet.
“As individuals leave the military, if they did 4 years or 40 years, as long as they served honorably, we want to put our money where our mouth is and say thank you for your service,” Boggs said. “And we do that by suiting them up with a custom, made-to-measure suit that’s made right here in the United States.”
The Veterans Closet provides transitioning service members, men and women, whether they’re within a year of getting out or already a year into civilian life with a custom tailored suit and dress shirt, built in America, at no cost. Add free professional headshots, resume reviews, and interview training, and the program addresses something almost nobody talks about: after years in uniform, many veterans own no professional civilian clothes at all.
Ask Pat Curran, a Chief Warrant Officer Five in Army aviation who’s made the trip to Tampa five or six years running, and he’ll tell you the suit isn’t a formality, it’s a turning point.
“A lot of us don’t know how to dress ourselves,” Curran said, laughing. “I’ve been wearing board shorts, tank tops and slippers my entire life. I’m retiring next year, and I just got measured up for an actual custom tailored suit and it’ll be the first custom tailored suit I’ve ever owned in my entire life. And he actually taught me how to wear a suit properly.”
The program’s track record speaks for itself: veterans who walked into job interviews “top notch” after being suited up and walked out with internships; one who woke up the morning after his headshot session to an interview request from an employer.
Saturday Morning: Push-Off at the Westshore Yacht Club
Then came the main event. Saturday morning, the boats lined up at the Westshore Yacht Club and pushed off into Tampa Bay for the 10th Annual All Heroes Open captains donating their time and their boats to take teams of veterans out for a full day on the water.
Fishing captain Michael Rogal of Safety Harbor, who has skippered a boat in the tournament for several years and took a boat of heroes out on the bay Saturday, put it simply: “The most important thing is supporting the veterans that serve our country. Some of them are underappreciated, and they really do a lot, and it means a lot to us as a nation. Second thing is just have fun and blow off some steam and catch a bunch of fish. And we certainly did today.”
What the Weekend Really Means
If you want to know what this event actually means to the people who come back every year, listen to Rafael Espinoza of Fort Mill, South Carolina, a retired veteran who met Boggs in 2008 when they were both stationed with an Aviation Battalion and deployed together multiple times, including to Afghanistan. It was on that first deployment that their friendship deepened into something more.
“We became close friends. But honestly, it was our faith that kind of brought us even closer together while we were deployed,” Espinoza said. “That’s when I really got to know James, just as a brother. Not just a brother in arms, but a brother in Christ.”
That bond is why he keeps coming back to this tournament, this was his fifth year. For him, the event fills the hardest gap in any military transition.
“When you leave the military, one of the most difficult things about the transition is that the people you were closest to you deploy together, you train together, you suffer together, you had losses together, you had victories together they’re no longer there,” Espinoza said. “It’s not the transition from one job to the other, because a job is a job. The most difficult part is knowing that your best friends are no longer there. But the beauty of this is that it brings us all back together. That’s the reason I come here religiously now.”
The tradition is still pulling in new faces, too. Adam Peters spent his first All Heroes Open weekend on the bay this year, invited onto a boat almost as an afterthought, and leaving as one of the event’s biggest believers.
“This was my first year at the Team ADDO event, and I don’t have enough nice things to say about it, from the All Heroes Welcome the night before, to all the people I got to meet, to the incredible job James Boggs is doing putting this on,” Peters said. “He was just generous in inviting me to be on a boat last minute, finding a boat for me to be on. I enjoyed the captain putting us on the fish. It was just an incredible experience being on the bay and getting to meet everybody.”
Curran calls it “the pinnacle of camaraderie”: “I get to come back and see all my old military buddies, and it’s for a good cause, because we’re out here helping veterans connect with each other.”
Ten years in, that’s the thread running through the whole weekend the fishing is the excuse, but the reunion is the point. And if the first-timers are already talking like this, the next ten years look just as bright.
How You Can Help
Team ADDO shows no signs of slowing down, and they can’t do it alone. Here’s how to get involved:
- Donate. Every contribution goes directly toward suiting up and supporting transitioning veterans. Give at teamaddo.org/donate.
- Apply or refer a veteran. If you, or a service member you know, are within one year of exiting the military or within one year of separation, the Veterans Closet is ready to suit you up. Apply at teamaddo.org/veterans-closet.
- Volunteer. From tournament ops to the Veterans Closet, this operation runs on people who want to give back.
- Sponsor. Businesses looking to make a tangible impact on veterans’ lives can partner with Team ADDO’s events year-round.
Heroes Media Group was on the ground all weekend covering the 10th Annual All Heroes Open, because this is what community looks like. Learn more about Team ADDO, support their mission, or get involved at teamaddo.org.
