If we've been out to your property in Aston, Garnet Valley, or anywhere else across the Brandywine Valley, you've seen the trucks, the crews, and the cleanup. What you probably haven't seen is the reason we sponsor a veteran-focused nonprofit headquartered nearly 45 minutes away in Doylestown, and why that distance doesn't matter to us at all.
Monster Tree Service of Brandywine Valley is veteran-owned. Kris served as an Engineer Officer in the U.S. Army with deployments to the Middle East. Hunter graduated from the Naval Academy and served as a Marine Corps Infantry Officer across the Western Pacific and Africa. Pat served in the Marine Corps Reserves. Buying this business wasn't a career pivot for us; it was a continuation of the same instinct that put us in uniform in the first place: show up, lead a team, and take care of the people around you.
The story that shaped our giving
The Travis Manion Foundation is named for First Lieutenant Travis Manion, a Doylestown native who wrestled at LaSalle College High School before attending the Naval Academy and commissioning into the Marine Corps. On his second deployment to Iraq, on April 29, 2007, his patrol was ambushed in Fallujah. Travis led a counterattack that pulled enemy fire away from his wounded Marines. Every one of them survived. He was 26 when he was killed, and he's buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in Section 60, beside his Naval Academy roommate and best friend, Navy SEAL Lieutenant Brendan Looney.
Before that final deployment, Travis left his family with a phrase that has since become a movement: "If Not Me, Then Who..."
From one family's loss to a national program
The Manion family built the Travis Manion Foundation around that idea, training veterans and the families of fallen service members to mentor the next generation in character, resilience, and leadership. Through programs like Character Does Matter and Operation Legacy, the Foundation now includes youth mentorship, community service initiatives, and leadership training for veterans; more than 78,000 veterans and survivors and over 800,000 young people have been part of it.
Why we still sponsor it here in Brandywine Valley
We don't have to be based in Doylestown to be tied to what it produced. Travis Manion is a Pennsylvania story before it's anything else, and every job we complete in Aston, Garnet Valley, and throughout the Brandywine Valley helps fund that story's next chapter. A portion of what we earn here goes directly to TMF.
We came home. Not everyone we served alongside did. This is one way we try to make that mean something.
Learn more or get involved at travismanion.org. And if a storm's left a mess in your yard, we're happy to take care of that too.
Monster Tree Service of Brandywine Valley — veteran owned and operated, serving Aston, Garnet Valley, and the surrounding Brandywine Valley communities.