ST. GEORGE — When an army veteran returned home from Iraq with a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder, he found therapy through music, inspiring him to open a violin gallery where he could sell his own line of instruments, teach others how to play and acclimate himself back into society while spreading love, one string at a time.

The journey to this point has been both sweet and tragic and begins with Chris Hobson’s happen-chance meeting with a woman who would later become his wife. Both in the Army Reserves, the pair met nearly two decades ago during a deployment to Iraq.

It was March 2003, and Chris Hobson was sitting on a plane with his Army unit when a beautiful woman wearing shiny boots asked if the seat next to him was taken. He found out later she had volunteered to go the night before they deployed and didn’t know a soul there.

“Out of a plane filled with a couple hundred guys, I was happy to have one of the only females sitting next to me,” he said. “She drooled on my shoulder on the way over as she fell asleep.”

In the dark of night, the team landed in Kuwait, hitting the runway with their lights off to avoid being detected. As they exited the plane, loud sirens filled the air, warning of incoming Scud missiles – missiles that can be loaded with chemical, biological or small nuclear warheads. 

“Saddam had used them in the past so we were kind of prepared for that mentally,” he said. “They showed us videos of him gassing civilians and attacking the Kurds and what the aftermath was. It was terrifying to think of.”

Then, there was silence. But only for a moment. Once again, the familiar sound of sirens filled the air. Chaos broke out as soldiers shut themselves in the belly of the plane and scrambled for safety into nearby shuttles while frantically closing doors. Hobson said this fight-or-flight reaction quickly became the norm as soldiers got used to the daily and nightly Scud missile alarms and ran into their bunkers to escape the rocket and mortar attacks.

The unit entered Kuwait right before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and Hobson said the day after then-President George W. Bush gave the orders to cross, they were there. He and his now-wife ended up in the same three-person section on the commander’s staff, where they worked together for the full 15 months of their deployment. He was a supply sergeant and she was a nuclear biological chemical warfare specialist.

Eventually, the unit made its way to a resupply area north of Baghdad, where they continued to develop their friendship. As time went on, their relationship evolved. Bored one day, Hobson said they tried kissing, but it didn’t work.

“We were laughing too much because, you know, friends don’t kiss,” he said. “We kept trying and eventually we became an item out there.”

As their relationship progressed, Hobson said they were formally written up for touching feet under the table, experienced constant threats to take away ranks and were even written up for “looking too happy.” He said they ducked behind shipping containers in order to spend time alone and even watched firefights together on the perimeter in full gas masks and gear as an interesting way of “dating.”

After one year of deployment, they were both chosen to go on leave for a few weeks. They met each other’s families and Hobson picked up an engagement ring. Upon their return to Iraq, he officially proposed. She said yes, they “made out a little,” and afterward, went to sleep.

Within an hour, they were awoken by mortars, this time hitting right where they slept. With 20,000 soldiers on their airfield base, the attack turned the camp into a warzone. 

“Twenty-eight mortars hit. People were running. We eventually found each other in the dark and held on to each other,” he said. “We huddled in a bunker for a few hours, just waiting for it to be over.”

After the deployment was complete, they were ready to leave the experience behind, get married and begin their life together, but it wasn’t that easy. Hobson said their individual experience acclimating back into civilian life couldn’t have been more contrasting.

His wife came back and “thrived,” going from no degree to a master’s degree in just three years. Hobson, on the other hand, returned with what he found out was a severe case of PTSD, which he was diagnosed with after he checked himself into a VA hospital and was stamped as 100% disabled because of it.

“To watch her succeed when she was sitting in the same guard towers as me, looking through the same night vision googles, running from the same bombs, experiencing the same things, to see her excel so well in school was difficult,” he said. “It was frustrating to be the one damaged by it.”

As the VA experimented with medications, Hobson said he was on a cocktail of prescriptions that were both physically and mentally damaging and found himself on a constant rollercoaster, jumping from one extreme to the other without reason. 

“I’ve never been that type. I never got fired. I never did poorly in school. And here I was losing jobs, rotating through them like crazy,” Hobson said. “I couldn’t even make it to work or school. I walked to the classroom, reach for the door handle, I’d stop, and I’d just freeze everywhere I went. And I didn’t understand why.”

As the noise in his head amplified, Hobson became extremely forgetful and mentally scattered. He once even took his kids to school on a Saturday. He found himself lost many times in his own town and had to stop by the police department in order to find his way home.

He was committed to an in-patient mental hospital seven times, including a time when he took an Uber to check himself in. At times, he wished he was in an actual wheelchair, not in the literal sense, but the fact that his physical appearance didn’t match the internal damage, which meant no one around him understood the pain.

Hobson said he attended school for nine years and wasn’t able to cash out with even an associate’s degree. In the last 15 years, due to his disorder, he hasn’t attempted to go to school or get a job and instead, became a stay-at-home parent to their five children. He held down the fort the best he could with laundry and cooking, with a struggle between what he was capable of doing and what society told him he should be.

While Hobson said most people assume it’s nice to have a spouse that’s also in the military because she understands, he said it’s not that simple. For him, every time a bomb hit near the base, it was a direct hit. He felt a shockwave that made him permanently afraid of loud sounds ever since. For his wife, the hit just felt close, but she was not traumatized by the experience in the same way he was.

“You can have 100 soldiers and every one of them has a different experience,” he said. “Every one of us felt that in a different way depending on our past experiences in life or upbringing. Some of us were probably predisposed to some type of mental illness. I experienced it completely differently from her.”

He said doctors told him that while his life could improve by learning coping skills to manage anxiety, depression, anger issues and mania, he would never get over his current situation and never get better. While initially labeled as 100% disabled from PTSD, 10 years later, he took another hard blow when they labeled him as totally and permanently disabled.

He cycled through various forms of therapy, including group therapy, horse therapy, nature therapy and music therapy, and even attended sweat lodges along with veteran and writing retreats. 

“We signed a line that we would go and defend the country, do what we were asked to do, and we did and were proud to do it. But coming back with that kind of mental damage, it felt like Chris died,” he said. “He’s somewhere in Iraq. I don’t like the same things. I don’t enjoy the same activities. I don’t socialize with the same people.”

Amid all the chaos, Hobson realized his passion for music still remained. He said he could pick up the violin and play like it was his own arm. The activity didn’t require complete concentration and flowed naturally and thoughtlessly, allowing him to find peace in the moments he played.

“I hate to get metaphysical here, but the music comes from here,” Hobson said as he pointed to his heart. “It just flows out of the instrument I play.”

Hobson said he played the violin for the first time at only 8 years old when he found his grandmother’s instrument in a storage closet. As he began to “saw” on it, his grandma initially scolded him, then asked if he wanted to learn how to play. He started violin lessons and his grandmother’s violin became his. He has continued to play ever since. 

In 2010, Hobson chose to focus on his music and began to repair old instruments and even teach violin lessons. He found his confidence and self-esteem boosted for many reasons, including his small contribution to the family outcome. When the parents of his students couldn’t afford quality instruments, he worked with vendors and suppliers to find quality instruments within their budgets. A 10-year process of supplying string instruments out of his home led to his very own line of string instruments in 2018.

When it comes to the creation of instruments, Hobson said he goes through everything from the varnish to the age and altitude at which the wood planks were created along with spacing and lines. He can look at an instrument and read the exact altitude and how the temperature changed over the years as the tree grew. He also restores old instruments that date all the way back to the 1600s.

In July of last year, with his wife’s full support and encouragement, he submitted a letter of intent to the Orson Pratt House with the goal of opening his very own violin shop. Just under a year later, on June 22, The Violin Gallery was officially opened to the public. And there will be a grand-opening event on Thursday. See the event details at the end of the article for more information. 

“It’s called the Violin Gallery because instruments in the store are very old,” he said. “1924, 1922 French and German cellos, 1650 Italian, 1723 waiting for repairs, a couple of Bulgarian ones that I got a week before we opened up and more.”

While he has continued to work through the mental and emotional trauma for the past 19 years, he said he realized the more he pursues his passions, the better he feels about himself. He also expressed gratitude to his wife who never left his side through his life’s darkest times.

“It’s difficult to even think of somebody wanting to stick around that long,” Hobson said. “She carried us, all of us, for a long time. I’m so glad she’s still here. I haven’t felt like I’m worth it, but I’m so glad she thought I was.”

“Music has always been a good coping mechanism for him,” Jackie Hobson said about her husband.

She also has founded the Veterans Business Resource Center and helped hundreds of veteran entrepreneurs during her time there. The couple pushes for veteran support in everything they do and are proud of their time and opportunity to serve their country.

The Violin Gallery is located at the Green Gate Village on the second level of the Orson Pratt house. The gallery offers string instrument lessons, a customized line of instruments for sale, instrument restoration and repair, along with rentals. A wide variety of sheet music also is available for purchase. For more information on the Violin Gallery, see their website.

Event details

• What: Violin Gallery grand opening
• When: Thursday, July 28 at 12:30 p.m.
• Where: Violin Gallery, 76 W. Tabernacle St., Suite 9D
• Admission: Free
• For more information see the event page.

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