Editor’s Note: If you are someone you love are thinking about or showing signs of suicidal thoughts, contact the Suicide and Crisis Hotline at 988. To learn about Suicide Prevention Training and Programming, contact Dawn Lankford at the Army Substance Abuse Program; BLDG 1224, Room 1 by email, dawn.s.lankford.civ@army.mil or phone, (502) 624-7374.
FORT KNOX, Ky. — “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care, and I care.”
Dawn Lankford, Lead Suicide Prevention Program Coordinator and Army Substance Abuse Program (ASAP) Specialist started her career in military social work in 2023, but her experience didn’t start there, it began many years prior with her own family.
In 2008 her husband, Kyle, who was then an Army combat medic, received debilitating wounds during a deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom - In 2011 he was medically retired, and Lankford became her husband’s primary caregiver in addition to being a stay-at-home mom.
Over the next decade the Lankford family became intimately familiar with the military social work system, instilling a passion in the future coordinator.
“During that process I dealt with a lot of social workers,” said Lankford. “Throughout that time, I decided that if ever I were able, I was going to change things. I was going to become a military social worker and help families like ours.”
Lankford reminisced on one social worker that made an impact on her.
“One social worker at the VA [Department of Veterans Affairs], she was super nice, her name was Rose,” said Lankford. “My husband had just gotten to the VA and into the system, and she just started handing me resources.”
She said Rose started handing her shoes and clothes, and began telling her all of the ways that the VA would be able to help her family.
When Rose was set to retire, several years later, she called the Lankfords one more time.
“She said, ‘I just want you to know that I’m retiring, and before I go, is there anything else I can do for you all?’” Lankford said, she paused. “That was a memorable thing that touched me,” she said. “I want to be the helping reason that people come to seek social work services. I want them to have a place; to know that there is someone like Rose to be able to offer them [help] in their time of crisis.”
So, with her husband on the path to full recovery in 2020, she returned to school and earned her bachelor’s degree in social work and master’s degree in social work with a military specialization from the Raymond A. Kent School of Social Work and Family Science at the University of Louisville.
Lankford now serves as the Fort Knox ASAP Suicide Prevention Program coordinator, a role she started in early April.
Hoping to facilitate a more open, welcoming community for people to not only feel comfortable speaking about their hardships, but also provide a safe space, Lankford is focused on community-wide driven initiatives.
“The difference I’m trying to make here is to bring the entirety of the Fort Knox installation in on the process of preventing suicide. [Showing] that it’s not just a service member problem, it’s not just a dependent problem, it’s not just a DA [Department of the Army] civilian or contractor problem,” Lankford said. “Suicide affects every single person here on this installation, and what I want to do is provide them the resources and tools to have access to preventative measures.”
In doing so, she hopes to eliminate resource isolation and build resiliency within the community, starting in September with Suicide Prevention and Awareness Month.
In conjunction with Suicide Prevention and Awareness Month Lankford will host a Resilient Warrior Community Day on Sept. 27 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The event will be held at Sadowski Center and is planning to facilitate partnerships with installation and ‘outside the gate’ resources.
“I call it ‘outside the gate thinking,’” said Lankford. “I want people from outside [the gate] to know that there are people inside the gate that could utilize their services and vice versa.”
Lankford aims to touch on each of the five tenants of suicide prevention – social, spiritual, physical, family and emotional - by hosting resiliency facilitators who touch on each of these topics.
At the end of the day, Lankford said that what she wants most is to help people realize that they matter.
“When they think that they don’t [matter], they do. They matter to me,” she said. “They may not know me, I don’t personally know them, but their life does matter.”
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Editor’s Note: For ‘outside the gate’ partners to register for Resilient Warrior Community Day follow the link Resilient Warrior Community Day-Ft. Knox Partner(s) Registration (apps.mil), or reach out to Dawn Lankford by email, dawn.s.lankford.civ@army.mil or phone, (502) 624-7374. Registration for the event ends Sept. 17.
Visit Fort Knox News at www.army.mil/knox for all of Central Kentucky's latest military news and information.
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