Sharing the Air
Jay Tobin’s Story
Jay doesn’t hesitate when you ask what guides his life. He gestures to the wall above his desk and quotes it from memory:
“He has shown thee, O man, what is good and what the Lord desires of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” — Micah 6:8
He doesn’t say it like a sermon. He says it like a compass.
Because by the time Jay names this verse, you realize he has already been living it for decades — long before he ever put it into words.
But to understand how he got there, you have to start much earlier.
A Boy Looking for His People
On a Wisconsin dairy farm, work begins before the sun rises. Responsibility is learned in the dark. Grit is not a concept, but a way of life. Jay was raised by farmers and factory workers — people who kept promises and did the job right. He was grateful for that life and loved the people who shaped him.
And still, even as a child, he sensed something quietly and persistently:
“I loved my farming family… but dairy farming was not my tribe.”
There was nothing wrong with where he came from. It simply wasn’t where he belonged. He couldn’t name what he was searching for — only that he needed to go looking for it.
Before the Marines. Before the Army. There was music. As a teenager, Jay marched with the Green Berets marching band and later with the Cavaliers Drum & Bugle Corps. He traveled the country and the world with groups built on discipline, rhythm, excellence, and teamwork. With every mile, that quiet feeling began to make sense. He still didn’t know where he fit — but he believed it was out there.
So when he learned the Marine Corps had its own drum and bugle corps, the decision felt obvious.
He didn’t enlist to be a warrior.
He enlisted to be a musician.
At seventeen, with his mother’s signature and no military history in his family, Jay signed an open contract to ship quickly. Instead of marching in a band, he was assigned to be an 0311 rifleman.
It was the first of many moments where his life would not follow the plan in his head. And the first of many times he would learn to serve well anyway.
Jay excelled. He became a radar technician and later served as a Marine Security guard at American Embassies. While serving in Cairo Egypt, he saw firsthand how culture, dignity, and environment shape the way people live and think. Each role was different, but the lesson repeated itself:
Environment shapes behavior. Behavior shapes community. Community shapes resilience.
He was learning how to build places where people could belong — long before he realized that’s what he was doing.
The Turning Point — Post 9/11 and Ranger School
After leaving the Marines, earning a degree, and later serving at Fort Riley in the brigade logistics office, Jay watched the world change on September 11th.
“Before, there were no guard posts… you could just drive on and off,” he recalls. “We had to build guard stations and perimeter fences… that was my job.”
The work wasn’t glamorous. But it was protective. Purposeful. He could see how structure steadied a community under stress.
He was learning how taking care of people holds communities together in hard places — a lesson that would take on far deeper meaning in the months ahead.
Then, in 2003 at Ranger School in his late thirties — exhausted, uncertain, and far from home — Jay experienced something that hit harder than any physical trial.
Jay had failed, but he would not quit. While enduring what the men like to refer to as “gulag” Jay would discover his next curveball, and heartbreak.
The Best Ranger Competition was canceled. Candidates were told to pack up and return to their units. Months of preparation, pride, and expectation dissolved in a single announcement. The weight of it settled over everyone there. Not anger. Not outrage. Just a quiet, crushing disappointment that left even the strongest men staring at the ground, unsure what to do next.
Jay felt it too. The same deflation. The same defeat. The same sense that something deeply meaningful had just slipped through his hands.
And in that shared low point — when no one was posturing, no one was performing, and everyone was simply human — two men opened up to him.
One feared he would go home to an empty house and a broken marriage.
Another believed this moment would derail his entire career.
Jay listened. He prayed with them. He watched their faces change.
It was in that shared vulnerability — not on obstacle courses or patrol lanes — that Jay realized something with startling clarity:
This was how he was meant to serve. The sentiment superseded his disappointment in a profound way.
A Newfound Purpose
Jay would spend the next 2 years in Seminary, training to step into his purpose. His first assignment as a chaplain took him somewhere few people ever experience.
In Alaska, he was one of a small group hand selected to serve alongside the Army’s only Arctic Airborne Reconnaissance unit. However, he was almost immediately deployed back to Iraq from 2006-2007. This time, not as an infantry soldier, but as a Chaplain.
A Chaplain in the Barracks
On most deployments, chaplains stay at the chapel on the forward operating base. That’s where services are held. That’s where soldiers know they can find them if they need to talk.
Jay did his services there, too.
But he didn’t live there.
“Typical chaplains live at the chapel… I got a room in the barracks.”
He set up what little office he had wherever the soldiers were, and he spent most of his time out at the combat outpost with them — not waiting to be needed, but sharing the days as they came.
He was never the chaplain who said, “You know where to find me.”
He was the chaplain who was already there.
Sweating in the same heat.
Bored in the same long stretches of nothing.
Stressed under the same pressure.
Afraid under the same incoming fire.
He wasn’t a separate safe place to visit when things got hard.
He made himself part of the place where things were hard.
He chose proximity over comfort. He went on patrols. Shared their terrain. Carried the same weight as the soldiers, with one visible difference:
He was the only one unarmed.
He wasn’t visiting. He was a soldier with them.
On one of those patrols, an enemy opened fire.
“A sniper tried to take my head off.”
Before his mind could process what was happening, Jay’s body moved. He grabbed the soldier closest to him and drove him to the ground. Around him, the squad returned fire and neutralized the threat.
What the soldiers remembered wasn’t the firefight. It was who the sniper aimed at first.
Credibility didn’t come from what Jay said. It came from how he served — with presence under pressure.
Other chaplains brought candy to open conversations. Jay brought cases of Jack Link’s beef jerky stuffed into his ammo pouches. In the middle of chaos, moving from cover to cover, he would lean in and say:
“Hey man, you want a beef jerky?”
It became legendary inside the unit.
He didn’t lead with sermons.
He led with humor. With humanity. With care.
That’s when the distance between title and brotherhood disappeared.
Jay also carried a burden many never see.
“I’m the person who identified every single person that died in our unit,” he says. He went to the morgue so others didn’t have to. He remembers the days men were killed, leaders wounded, vehicles destroyed by IEDs. He speaks just as candidly about what follows after war — the suicides, the quiet crises, the moments that demand care long after the battlefield ends.
The same vulnerability that allowed soldiers to trust him also marked him. The chaplain who carried others began carrying too much.
Same Man Different Uniform
As Jay’s military career came to a close, he was presented with one last unexpected turn.
The Army wanted to send him to the Pentagon.
It was a tremendous honor — the kind of assignment many spend a lifetime hoping to receive. For a moment, the weight of it sat in front of him. Recognition. Prestige. A clear next step.
But Jay didn’t hesitate long.
He knew what that move would require of his family. He knew where they were in life, what they needed, and what it would cost them. What could have been a difficult decision was clear as day.
Jay was always going to choose his family.
So instead of accepting the assignment, he chose to retire. He transitioned out of the tribe he had spent almost three decades a part of.
He stepped into civilian life, eventually working his way up to city administrator in Minnesota. On paper, it was success. Responsibility recognized. Work done well.
Even in a role he did well, Jay felt the familiar, quiet restlessness return.
He was still building environments. Still serving people. Still leading with care. But he knew this creeping feeling all too well — he needed to expand his tribe — the unspoken understanding that exists among those who have carried weight together.
Then, another God wink.
Jay was approached about joining an organization called Deep Sea Valkyries.
Deep Sea Valkyries is a nonprofit community built for veterans, first responders, and caregivers who carry the invisible weight of service. Through shared experiences like scuba diving, they create environments where vulnerability, accountability, and trust happen naturally. Beneath the surface, titles fall away. Rank disappears. What remains is the simple act of learning to breathe again, side by side.
They needed someone who could sit among soldiers and first responders and understand through their eyes. They needed someone grounded in ministry, who understood how to lead with love and let faith flow in and out authentically. And they needed someone comfortable beneath the surface of the ocean.
As Jay listened, something in him recognized it immediately.
This wasn’t a new mission.
It was everything his life had been preparing him for.
A Long Way From the Boat
Underwater, sound is distorted. The world slows. Breath becomes rhythm.
Jay tells a story from what should have been a routine dive with Deep Sea Valkyries.
“We’re a long way from the boat, and I’m almost out of air.”
A leak in his tank. Too far to make it back alone. Panic threatens to rise, but training steadies him. He signals for help.
The dive master does something simple.
“He just hands me air.”
Sharing a reserve supply and regulator, they make it back safely. One breath at a time.
Jay carries the lesson to the surface:
“Very few of us are good at mind reading.” You have to be willing to ask for help. And sometimes, the best way to care for someone is to notice, to share what you have, and to help them breathe again.
That is what Deep Sea Valkyries does. And it is why Jay fits there so naturally.
The boy who once felt like he didn’t belong in the small world he came from
found a community built on honesty, accountability, shared struggle, and unwavering support. A place where everything he learned about people, environment, and belonging comes together.
Epilogue — Measured by Love
Today, Jay speaks with quiet gratitude. A thirty-year marriage. Children he is proud of. Nearly three decades of service marked by grit, sacrifice, and deep community.
What stands out most is not where he has been, but what he left behind in each place: environments where people could be vulnerable enough to be human. Barracks that felt safer because he was there. Units that trusted more easily. Communities that felt more cared for.
In the end, the thread through Jay’s life is not rank, title, or achievement.
It is the courage to be vulnerable first.
To sit with the struggling.
To walk unarmed beside the afraid.
To ask for help when he needs air.
And to offer it freely to others who need it.
Micah 6:8 still hangs above his desk.
Not as decoration.
As a compass.
A man who trusted every unexpected turn. Who chose to serve well wherever he stood. Who never stopped searching for — and building — tribes where people felt safe enough to be human. A man who learned, over a lifetime, to create places where people can breathe — and why that is his hero legacy.
Now, a man at peace, living a life well lived, one breath at a time.
