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He saw it in bundles in both men, excellent cooks, particularly in Southern cuisine.

"I know if they had a restaurant, you couldn't have gotten inside their place, that successful it could be," Coulthard said last week. "But they were dealing with the other stuff. They talked about it, but it was too big of a thing for them."

Years later, on Friday, Coulthard and a group of similarly minded military veterans stood inside Building 11 at the VA Medical Center campus at Fort Snelling. The men alongside Coulthard this day — Guy Gambill, Jack Scharrett, local attorney John Baker and others — were there to get the word out of their plans to give entrepreneurial-minded veterans in Minnesota the business.

"I had a five-year plan for this back in 1998,'' Coulthard, 63, said of the Veterans' Initiative Center & Research Institute. Its acronym — VICTRI — is pronounced "victory."

"But there were lack of resources and other veteran priorities, like finding places for the homeless and setting up sober houses," Coulthard added.

VICTRI, slated to open in
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January, is being billed as a one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art nonprofit venture that could become a national model. It will help veterans and their family members start, build and sustain successful businesses or initiatives through education, services and support.

Staffed by veterans and their relatives, the center has already partnered with public and private universities to offer a short-term business education course. It also will provide needed tools to navigate the world of small business, subcontracting and other ventures.

The goal: help veterans to not only put up a shingle but also to keep it there and watch the business grow.

IT WORKED IN IRAQ

Center staffers note that 90 percent of all startup businesses fail in their first year. Scharrett, 39, a business-development consultant and major in the U.S. Army Reserve's Civil Affairs division, said the reasons for the belly-ups have little to do with passion and energy. They have more to do, he said, with the owner's lack of business acumen, which includes skills to set up financial statements, manage cash flow and understand tax laws.

Scharrett, a West Point graduate and New York native, said the intent of the center parallels that of a similar center he helped establish while stationed in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. The Kirkuk Business Center was set up in that city as a business development and incubation center managed and staffed by Iraqi residents in an attempt to jump-start the war-torn nation's small-business economy.

Scharrett helped establish and maintain seven Iraqi-owned ventures. Perhaps the most ambitious is what is now Iraq's largest agricultural cooperative, including 750 member families and stretching over 6 million acres.

Scharrett returned to Minnesota with thoughts that such an effort easily could be set up here to benefit veterans seeking to open businesses following their deployments.

After doing some research, he said, "I was shocked to find that although there are many veteran service organizations out there, I could not find one that was focused on helping veterans to start and sustain businesses."

What he did find were fellow vets like Coulthard who had similar ideas jelling.

Besides a business library set up in partnership with the James J. Hill Reference Library in St. Paul, the center will provide computers, phones, office space and a boardroom for use by vets as they shape their startup businesses.

It also will include a research institute, another reported first, that will produce, assist with or critique studies on veterans and related issues.

Gambill will head the institute. He's another Vietnam-era veteran who was a member of Gov. Tim Pawlenty's Beyond the Yellow Ribbon Task Force for the Minnesota National Guard, and he serves as an advocacy coordinator and lobbyist for the nonprofit Council on Crime and Justice.

The center, which has received the backing of federal and state government officials and various veterans groups, is seeking corporate or other funding for the building's infrastructure.

A CONCRETE VISION

Coulthard is well aware of the funding difficulties ahead in a time of a recession and economic instability. But he has taken on battles before.

The Iowa-raised farm boy survived numerous skirmishes as a combat infantry rifleman in Vietnam with Company C, 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry, 196th Light Infantry Brigade.

As CEO of Minnesota Assistance Council for Veterans, Coulthard developed and helped build 200 units of permanent housing for homeless veterans on two VA campuses and three outstate centers. Two sections of those units sit squarely behind Building 11, which once served as the home of the VA director.It's all about can-do with this bunch of local vet-loving vets — damn the torpedoes or the challenges.

"I believe what many returning veterans possess is a great desire to catch up with their peers again," said Coulthard, who founded the center and will serve as board treasurer and the center's director. "They also bring a lot of energy and are very mission-focused. We hope this place is where they can come and get the help they need and have someone always there to help them walk through things."

The number of the building is a promising sign: In numerology, 11 stands for higher ideals, invention, fulfillment and vision.

Rubén Rosario can be reached at rrosario@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5454.

ONLINE

To learn more about the Veterans' Initiative Center & Research Institute, go to victri.org.