‘A place to begin to heal’: Fort Meade opens a resiliency center for those who bear the weight of secret, stressful missions

On one side of the Fort Meade gate, they are part of the nation’s secret-finding and -keeping apparatus. They’re on the front lines, however remotely, of global conflicts and nefarious threats. On the other side, they are just another tired worker who stops at Royal Farms for coffee — but with the weight of knowledge to which no one else in line is privy. One such Fort Meade worker told Tim O’Ferrall that he remembered thinking: “How are you all not screaming right now?” “It’s a stressor,” O’Ferrall says now, with some understatement. O’Ferrall is the general manager of the Fort Meade Alliance, a community group that supports the installation and partnered with it to create the Education and Resiliency Center that will have its grand opening Thursday.