Thirty-nine Catholic businesses in the Discover Catholic Business directory reference veterans, military service, or the armed forces in their profiles. Nine of them are owned or founded by veterans. Only two carry the directory's formal veteran-owned flag. On Veterans Day 2026, that gap between the businesses that exist and the businesses that can be found is the most important number in this report.
A Marine who became an estate-planning attorney in Omaha. An Air Force family that runs a Catholic travel agency in Georgia. A veteran in Texas who writes books about the priests who shaped his faith. They are in the directory, and until now almost no one searching for a Catholic veteran-owned business would have found them.
November 11 carries two anniversaries for Catholics. It is the memorial of St. Martin of Tours, the fourth-century Roman soldier who cut his cloak in half to clothe a beggar and later became a bishop. It is also Veterans Day, first observed as Armistice Day to mark the end of fighting in the First World War on November 11, 1918, and renamed in 1954 to honor all who have served. The businesses below sit at the intersection of those two stories: people who served their country and now serve their communities, with their Catholic faith stated openly.
5 Key Findings from the Data
1. Nine Catholic businesses in the directory are veteran-owned or veteran-founded. They span seven categories, from auto repair to book publishing to estate law, and they are spread across Florida, Texas, Georgia, Arizona, Nebraska, and online-only shops.
2. Only two of the nine carry the directory's veteran-owned flag. The flag powers the Catholic veteran-owned businesses page and the veteran filter in search. The other seven state their service in their descriptions, where a reader can see it but a filter cannot. Claiming a listing and checking one box fixes that.
3. Thirty more Catholic businesses serve veterans and military families as a stated specialty. Funeral homes that provide military honors, counselors who work with veterans, birth doulas who serve military families, a VA-loan mortgage office, and a church supply house that ships to military installations around the world.
4. Florida is the center of gravity. Eight of the 39 listings are in Florida, including five funeral homes and two veteran-owned trade businesses. Texas is second with five.
5. The segment is small because the field is new, not because the businesses are missing. The veteran-owned flag was added to the directory well after most of the 46,000+ listings were imported. The 39 businesses in this report are the ones whose owners wrote their service into their own descriptions. The real number is larger, and it grows every time a veteran claims a listing.
Catholic Veteran-Owned Businesses in the Directory
These nine businesses identify as veteran-owned, veteran-operated, or founded by a veteran in their directory profiles.
| Business | Location | Category | What They Do | |----------|----------|----------|--------------| | Barker Travel Crew | Warner Robins, GA | Pilgrimages and travel | Catholic-owned, veteran-operated travel agency; the owners attend Mass at Our Lady of the Skies on base | | Gorman's Auto Service & Tire Center | Marco Island, FL | Automotive | Veteran-owned auto repair: tires, brakes, diagnostics | | Just Like New Automotive | Canutillo, TX | Automotive | Veteran-owned full-service repair, inspections, engine swaps | | Veterans Garage Doors & Openers | Sarasota, FL | Home services | Veteran-owned garage door repair and installation with military discounts | | Kitchen Tune-Up of Phoenix | Phoenix, AZ | Home services | Locally and veteran-owned kitchen remodeling; St. Thomas the Apostle parishioners | | fromHeaven Books | Flower Mound, TX | Books | Founder Greg Hendry, a veteran and father of five, writes about the priests who shaped his faith | | Dennis G. Peatrowsky, Attorney at Law | Omaha, NE | Legal | U.S. Marine Corps veteran; estate planning, business formation, wealth planning for over 20 years | | Magnificat Catholic | Online | Gifts | Family and veteran-owned Catholic gifts and apparel | | Shepherd's | Online | Apparel | Veteran-owned clothing and style for Catholic men |
The spread matters. Veteran-owned Catholic businesses are not concentrated in one trade. They fix cars, remodel kitchens, plan pilgrimages, draft wills, publish books, and sell clothing. Anyone who wants to direct a purchase toward a veteran can do it in the ordinary course of life, without changing what they were going to buy.
Two of these businesses appeared in earlier reports. Barker Travel Crew was one of the featured concierge agencies in our Catholic pilgrimage company data report, and the two auto shops belong to the 935 listings covered in the Catholic automotive data report.
Catholic Businesses That Serve Veterans and Military Families
The second group is larger. These 30 businesses are not necessarily veteran-owned, but they name veterans or military families as people they specifically serve.
| Type of Business | Listings | Examples | |------------------|----------|----------| | Funeral homes with military honors or veteran services | 6 | Oak Ridge Funeral Care (Winter Haven, FL), Reilly-Rakowski Funeral Home (Philadelphia, PA), Charlotte Memorial (Punta Gorda, FL), Prevatt Funeral Home (Hudson, FL) | | Birth doulas serving military families | 5 | Made for a Mission Birth Services (San Antonio, TX), Marissa Petson, Doula (Pooler, GA), Starlight Bridge Birth (Murfreesboro, TN) | | Counselors specializing in veterans and first responders | 4 | Philip Granish (Battle Creek, MI), Gabriel Crawford (Wexford, PA), David Bell (Colorado Springs, CO) | | Physicians practicing at military or VA hospitals | 3 | Catholic Medical Association members at Walter Reed, Keller Army Community Hospital, and the New Mexico VA system | | Military relocation and VA-loan specialists | 2 | Exit Sands Realty (Panama City, FL), Home Dream Mortgage (Wilmer, TX) | | Church supply serving military installations | 1 | Holy Family Religious Supplies (Albuquerque, NM), in business over sixty years | | Other (paracord rosary makers, military gift lines, a Navy-spouse photographer) | 9 | Totus Tuus Rosaries, Lauren Emily Photography (Norfolk, VA) |
Funeral homes lead the list, and that is not a coincidence. Military funeral honors are a federal entitlement for eligible veterans, and Catholic funeral homes in retirement-heavy Florida counties have built their services around them. If a veteran in your family is Catholic, the Catholic funeral services category and our guide to finding Catholic funeral services are the places to start before you need them.
The counselors deserve a note too. Four Catholic mental health professionals in the directory list veterans, military, and first responders as a specialty, and all four integrate the faith into their practice. Browse the full Catholic healthcare category to find them by state.
Where Catholic Veteran Businesses Are Located
| State | Listings Referencing Veterans or Military | Notable Concentration | |-------|-------------------------------------------|-----------------------| | Florida | 8 | Five funeral homes, two veteran-owned trades, one military-relocation brokerage | | Texas | 5 | Veteran-owned auto repair, a veteran author, a VA-loan lender, a military-family doula | | Pennsylvania | 3 | A funeral home with veteran honors and two counselors | | Georgia | 2 | Veteran-operated travel agency, military-family doula | | Colorado | 2 | A counselor serving veterans and a wedding photographer | | Others (AZ, MA, MD, MI, NE, NM, NY, SC, TN, VA, WI) | 13 | One or two each | | Online only | 6 | Gift, apparel, and rosary shops, plus one doula, with no fixed storefront |
Florida's lead tracks its veteran population, which is among the largest in the country, and its Catholic population, which is the largest in the Southeast. Browse the Florida Catholic business directory and the Texas Catholic business directory to see these businesses alongside the thousands of other Catholic-owned companies in each state.
How the Numbers Compare Nationally
Veterans own a meaningful share of American small businesses. The U.S. Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy reports roughly 1.9 million veteran-owned businesses in the United States, and the Census Bureau's Annual Business Survey counts more than 300,000 veteran-owned firms with paid employees. Veteran-owned businesses are concentrated in exactly the trades that appear in the directory: construction, professional services, repair, and retail.
Against that backdrop, 9 veteran-owned businesses out of 41,662 visible Catholic listings is not a measure of how many Catholic veterans own businesses. It is a measure of how few have told the directory. The Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, the Catholic diocese that serves U.S. service members, veterans in VA facilities, and their families worldwide, describes a Catholic military community numbering well over a million. The business owners among them are out there. Most of them simply have not claimed a listing yet.
How to Find a Catholic Veteran-Owned Business
The directory now has a dedicated page for this. The Catholic veteran-owned businesses page lists every business with the veteran-owned flag, and the veteran filter in browse lets you combine it with a category or a state. As more owners claim their listings, both grow automatically.
For businesses that describe their service in the profile but have not set the flag, the search box works: a search for "veteran" returns the businesses above, and the full directory can be narrowed by state from there.
What This Means for Catholic Veterans Who Own a Business
If you are a veteran and a Catholic business owner, the single most useful thing you can do today takes two minutes. Claim your listing, open the edit form, and check the veteran-owned box. Your business will appear on the veteran-owned page and in filtered searches immediately after approval.
If you are not yet listed, add your listing free. The directory holds 46,000+ Catholic businesses and organizations, and Catholic families searching for a veteran-owned contractor, attorney, or shop will find you where they are already looking.
St. Martin gave away half his cloak on a cold night and kept the other half. The businesses in this report are run by people who gave years of their lives in service and are now building something for their families and their parishes. Finding them should not require reading 41,000 descriptions. Now it does not.
Sources:
- Discover Catholic Business directory data, September 2026 (39 listings referencing veterans or military service; 9 veteran-owned or veteran-founded; 2 with the veteran-owned flag)
- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, History of Veterans Day (https://department.va.gov/veterans-day/history-of-veterans-day/)
- U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy, veteran-owned business research (https://advocacy.sba.gov/)
- U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey (https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/abs.html)
- Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA (https://www.milarch.org/)