Bill Leahy of Quaker Hill gets emotional every time he talks about the suicide of his brother Sean last December shortly after he left the Marines for the second time.

“We walked very similar paths,” said Leahy, 38, a veteran himself and, like his brother, a former college hockey player.

By all accounts, Sean was a tough, rambunctious older brother who enjoyed reading philosophy and arguing politics while also serving his country in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, where he was highly decorated for bravery. It didn’t seem possible the Marine major was gone.

“There had to be a hundred or so Marines at his funeral,” Leahy noted.

But the more Leahy obsessed over his brother’s death, the more he realized it was hardly an anomaly. According to U.S. Defense Department statistics, nearly 17 former service members die by suicide every day, or about 6,000 a year, and in Bill’s own battalion alone (he never deployed) eight veterans died by suicide shortly after coming home, he said.

A lot of people go straight from high school to the military, and that’s where their personal growth stops, said Leahy, who noted his brother was a war hero but didn’t know how to do basic things outside the military without being told what to do and how to do it. No doubt it also led to his rather stunted view of politics wrapped in patriotism that Leahy said most of his family had imbibed from a military father.

He said Catholics believe you go to hell if you kill somebody, but it’s OK if you do it for your country.

“That’s sick,” he said. “I came to the realization we had so little value of life.”

And Leahy, a graduate of West Point with a master’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, vowed to do something about that. So he formed a company, Renaissance Reliability LLC, that just started training veterans fresh out of the service in manufacturing jobs and will be connecting them with companies desperately needing their services.

Being needed, he said, is a big deal in the military. And a lack of purpose is one of the reasons veterans often come home feeling a bit lost and disconnected.

Leahy felt the same way himself after six years in the military, and he went through a long depression before and after his release that led to him being admitted to rehab. But upon discharge he eventually found himself as a supervisor for Weyerhaeuser in the Eugene, Oregon, area, where he specialized in reliability engineering.

He’s also worked at Mercedes Benz, Merck Pharmaceuticals, Starbucks, Lockheed Martin and McKee Foods Corp., maker of Little Debbie cakes, to name a few.

Leahy, whose family has Connecticut roots, eventually found his way to Quaker Hill to be close to his sister, Erin Saylor, who also lives in town.

Now considered an expert in the field of reliability, he believes veterans would make perfect employees to help improve manufacturing processes because of their attention to detail and adherence to following processes. And with 200,000 veterans leaving the service every year, he said, companies like Electric Boat will be able to find a steady pool of talent ready for this growing field.

“What we need is butts in the seats,” Leahy said when I interviewed him at Washington Street Coffee House in New London in February.

At that point, Renaissance Reliability was little more than a dream, yet he already was talking about the possibility of a documentary on PBS or Netflix. But dreams do come true, and when I talked to him Friday over the phone he told me the program he envisioned just launched two weeks ago at Metalcraft, a Wisconsin company that makes military medals and the place where Leahy’s brother was working when he died by suicide.

He said three veterans and three college interns are currently connected to the program, which offers academic credit at the University of Tennessee as well as paid internships. Graduation is scheduled Aug. 10.

“It’s an experiment,” Leahy said. “We’re already seeing results and excitement.”

Leahy said he spent much time seeking out veterans interested in the program, who have to get orders from their commanding officer while still on duty to get manufacturing training well in advance of their military release.

“Academia is not serving the military the way it needs to,” Leahy said.

And he said manufacturers like Lockheed, Georgia Pacific and Weyerhaeuser are looking for a wide range of skills that could include writers and artists as well as those skilled in human resources and health services.

To connect veterans to his program, Leahy’s using a Department of Defense program called SkillBridge that helps veterans in transition train for and find jobs.

“Multiple big corporations are ready to hire,” Leahy said. “Reliability is not nice to have; it’s essential.”

Leahy’s key idea is to make reliability a core value in manufacturing to protect and advance “Made in America” prestige. Reliability, Leahy said in a March conference presentation at the University of Tennessee, stands along with Environment, Safety and Health to form the acronym RESH that he hopes will become an industry mantra, pushing manufacturers to institute such measures as predictive maintenance, essentially anticipating the breakdown of certain equipment over time.

According to Leahy, nearly everyone he meets is enthusiastic about the prospects for his new company, which could run as a nonprofit or, alternatively might get a headhunting fee for every new employee it is able to onboard. But more than anything, it’s a way to pay homage to his brother and help give new meaning to lives shattered by the pressures of war and peacekeeping.

“It’s our living amends; it’s making it right,” Leahy said of the opportunity to train veterans in manufacturing. “Things have been happening quick the last few months.”

And if Leahy can deliver on the promise of his idea, it will be a lasting legacy for him and for big brother Sean.

Lee Howard is The Day’s business editor. To reach him, email l.howard@theday.com.

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