In 2023, Dave, our Program Director, received a communication from the folks over at Fractal Design about perhaps partnering up again to send a PC to a Veteran. While our PC Vetrofits program has been deactivated for the time being due to funding, we still have plenty of unfulfilled requests we have held on to in the hope of someday fulfilling them.
Thankfully, Fractal Design, along with Gigabyte, TeamGroup, and AMD, pulled together the parts to help Stack Up get a beautiful, brand-new PC into a Veteran's hands. After many manufacturing delays we eventually received all of the parts and our Community Manager, Zach, flew out to the warehouse to help Dave build the PC and prepare it for its new home. You can check out the build process in the video below.
Once that was completed, Dave had to sit down and review our list of requests and decide on a Veteran to receive it—preferably someone we could hand-deliver the PC to. In a stroke of fate, two years ago, before sunsetting the PC Vetrofits program, Ian, Dave's assistant at the warehouse, nominated Army Veteran Sean for a new PC. In his request written so long ago, Ian told us:
I am nominating Sean [redacted for privacy], a friend of mine that I've known for a few years and know as a hard working man who's loyal to his friends and family above all else. Sean is a surly Veteran who served in dangerous theaters and is still picking out shrapnel from a Humvee, but right now it's not his physical wellbeing that I worry about. He's gone through a lot this last year including his mother being diagnosed with brain cancer. Sean has done everything he can to be there for his family during every step of this strife, being a positive role model and parental figure for his kid brother. Sean and I walked together in the wedding of our mutual friend James to his wife Ash. Sean was the best man and through thick and thin he's been there for James, and James has stuck by Sean through every trying time. This PC would allow him to share in games with friends and family and help him take his mind off the stresses in his life, it would also give him a good system to stay connected with any social media he uses for distant and nearby friends
Sunsetting the PC Vetrofit program was truly a difficult moment for us when so many Veterans could use a new PC, not just for gaming but for life in general. Unfortunately, when costs outpace what we get the funds for, we end up having to go back to the drawing table and figure out where to cut to save other programs.
We chose Sean among our list of PC Vetrofit requests not only because of the ease of delivery, with him being so close to the Stack Up Warehouse in Palm Coast, Florida but also because we found out through Ian that Sean's life continued to take some tough twists and turns.
Dave Crouse shared this note about the PC delivery after we handed off the PC to Sean:
We received this request from Ian, one of our staff members, about two years ago. Sean had been through a lot at that time and getting him on the shortlist for support was a no-brainer. We didn’t know back then that we were going to have to sunset our Vetrofit PC program, but we kept our waitlist handy for future opportunities. My deepest thanks to Fractal, Gigabyte, TeamGroup, and AMD for helping Stack Up support this veteran with such a killer PC!
Thank you once again to Fractal Design, Gigabyte, TeamGroup, and AMD for this one-of-a-kind rescue. Thanks especially to Fractal Design for getting the ball rolling on this PC. We're not going into detail on the specifics of the parts, but just know that our staff member Zach, our in-house PC guy, called it a "beast."
We're glad we could give a PC to a Veteran like Sean, and we hope it'll bring him plenty of joy and comfort as long as he uses it.