Clayton Merritt was supposed to graduate in 2019 from his 12-week surf program for veterans. His mother died the same day.
After driving two hours to his hometown of Sumter, Merritt found himself overwhelmed. He turned around and drove back to Charleston to do one thing: surf.
“It brought me a lot of peace,” Merritt said.
That experience is part of why Merritt now leads Warrior Surf Foundation, a Charleston-area nonprofit that provides free surf therapy, yoga and wellness programming for veterans, active-duty service members and their immediate families.
The organization’s 12-week program combines surfing, yoga and talk therapy, with the goal of helping participants build community and develop tools to navigate the challenges that can follow military service.
Merritt first joined the program as a participant in 2019 But from 2013 to 2017, he served in the Army as a member of 11 Bravo Infantry, stationed at Fort Carson, Colo. During his service, Merritt was deployed to Afghanistan twice before separating and moving directly to Charleston, where he enrolled at the College of Charleston to study exercise science.
A little distance
When a friend’s girlfriend, who ran yoga for the Warrior Surf Foundation, first invited him to try the nonprofit’s program, he declined. Then he declined again.
Merritt said he wanted distance after leaving the military from anything that reminded him of the intensity associated with military culture.
“You just don’t want to be around that anymore,” Merrit said.
But she kept asking, and eventually, he showed up.
During his first surf lesson, an instructor pushed him into a wave, which he says is standard for beginner surfing. Immediately after, he paddled back out and asked if he could try catching one on his own. He did.
“I can’t really describe the feeling,” Merritt said. “It’s one of those things that has to be felt.”
He bought a surfboard on the way home. Soon, he was surfing three to four times a week.
Eventually Merritt volunteered with the organization that introduced him to the sport. He volunteered as a wellness coach and then began teaching surf lessons. By 2021, he became executive director.
Army veteran Andrew Manzi started the Warrior Surf Foundation in 2015 after returning from a tour overseas and discovering surfing to be transformative.
Saving lives
Today, the foundation aims to put 100 veterans through its full program in Folly Beach each year. It also invites 50 to 100 more veterans to Folly Beach for a condensed version of the experience.
Merritt said the program being free is a nonegotiable. He said if he had to pay when he first joined he wouldn’t have done it.
“This program has saved lives. Multiple lives,” he said. “I know of a few firsthand. If they had to pay, maybe they would have done it, maybe they wouldn’t have. But this program wouldn’t have had the opportunity to save their lives.”
Holly Hillman, a resident of Folly Beach and Navy veteran who served from 2006 to 2012, completed the Warrior Surf program in 2019. She, said the cost barrier is real for many veterans, particularly those living on disability payments and struggling to work after service.
“I do think there are some veterans that kind of have some like entitlement … especially some of the more like combat veterans where they’re like, ‘I served my country. I did all this shit,’” she said. “Also a lot of the veterans that get out of service are dealing with severe PTSD especially. They’re living on really limited budgets,, especially if they can’t work or are struggling to work.” She said she initially resisted joining for reasons similar to Merritt’s, but decided to attend, partly because the program was free.
“I’m a veteran, but I didn’t identify with that part of myself very much,” she said. “Coming into a veteran organization, I was kind of like, ‘I don’t know, that’s not really my scene.’ ”
What surprised her was the camaraderie, which she said is something most vets miss from time in the service..
“Those brothers and sisters that are just their ride or die,” she said.
She said the foundation recreates that sense of connection regardless of military branch, background or experience.
Surfing, yoga, therapy
Participants who enroll in the program are required to participate in its three components: surfing, yoga and therapy. It helps the foundation to track whether its approach works.
One of the holistic approaches the foundation uses is what researchers call “blue mind,” which explores the psychological benefits associated with being near water.
Veterans going through the program are required to participate in yoga, surfing and therapy sessions 
Veterans going through the program are required to participate in yoga, surfing and therapy sessions 
Veterans going through the program are required to participate in yoga, surfing and therapy sessions
Hillman said that theory along with the wellness sessions helped her shift her mindset.
“Something bad would happen and I’d be like, of course it happened to me, everything bad always happens to me,” she said. “It helped me change my mindset to: Things are going to happen, whether or not you allow them to be bad or good.”
Chris Dixon, a longtime surfer who has served on the Warrior Surf board for more than a decade, said the program gives veterans something that civilian life often does not.
“It provides a way for veterans to keep helping each other and paying it forward,” said Dixon, a former City Paper editor who lives on James Island. “And it helps put the trauma, whatever the trauma is, out of your head and move forward.”
He said the main lesson that the ocean teaches the veterans is to go with the flow.
“You can’t control the ocean any more than you can control your life,” he said.
The Warrior Surf Foundation operates as a nonprofit, sustained through donations, grants and fundraising events. But Merritt is clear that finances will not determine access.
For the year 2024, the Warrior Surf Foundation raised approximately $619,000 and reported about $576,000 in expenses.
“Whether we have zero dollars or a million dollars in the bank, we’re going to be operating,” Dixon said. “We’re never going to turn a veteran down.”
Jai’La Du Rousseau is a magazine, news and digital journalism graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
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