Montrose is a pretty little town with 19,000 citizens, nestled in the mountains of southern Colorado, where people come to raft along the Uncompahgre River and enjoy the outdoor beauty.
But Melanie Kline thinks she can make Montrose even better by becoming the most vet-friendly town in America. Kline is the founder of Welcome Home Montrose, a nonprofit that strives to make veterans feel valued and cared for in all aspects of their lives.
One of the nonprofit’s initiatives is the Dream Job program, through which wounded veterans live in Montrose for six months for an internship with a “dream job” and are provided free housing. The first participants included former Marines Joshua Heck, who wants to work in horticulture and Edward J. Lyons III, who wants to be a high school teacher. Buckhorn Gardens and the Montrose School District mentored them in their chosen fields, while citizen of Montrose sponsored their housing. Heck stayed on after his internship, and works in a plant nursery.
So far 560 veterans have registered for services through Montrose’s Warrior Resource Center, which provides them with information about adaptive sports, applying for benefits, suicide prevention, higher education, job training and placement, financial assistance, counseling, social activities, wellness and alternative healing resources and more.
“This place is a lifesaver,” Army National Guard Spec. Tim Kenney, who suffers from PTSD, told Nancy Lofholm of the Denver Post. “It’s just a safe place to go. I drop in pretty often.” The center serves veterans from every war and conflict, from World War II to Afghanistan. Last summer, Welcome Home Montrose sponsored 20 veterans to visit for its Mission No Barriers week, during which volunteers kept vets busy with outdoor activities and community potlucks.
The entire town is involved in this mission, including the 33 businesses who’ve joined a veteran discount program, a military widow who stops by the Warrior Resource Center with baked goods every week, and an anonymous donor who pays for Executive Director Emily Smith’s salary and benefits. So far, the center mostly serves veterans who were already living in Montrose, but one day Kline hopes the town’s welcoming attitude will attract veterans from across the country to move there. Representatives of sixty communities have asked Welcome Home Montrose for information about how they can adapt this program for their own towns. Meanwhile, the residents of Montrose are making veterans feel more welcome than ever.
The people of Montrose “have the appreciation and the heart for what these veterans have done,” Smith says. “They just didn’t know before what to do for them.”
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Tag: Adaptive Sports
This Special-Needs Teen Gave Herself and Her Favorite Charity the Birthday Gift of a Lifetime
Gabi Ury of Boulder, Colorado had it rough from the very beginning.
She was born with VATER Syndrome, a condition that causes a cluster of birth defects in the vertebrae, anus, trachea, esophagus and kidneys. Since birth, Ury has endured 14 surgeries to correct the effects of the syndrome, which left her with missing vertebrae and calf muscles. But her peppy spirit has remained intact despite all the time she’s spent in the hospital, and when she turned 16 on April 17, she wanted to give herself an incredible birthday present by attempting to break the Guinness World Record for the longest-held plank by a female.
Gabi has tried to break records before by constructing the longest hopscotch course and trying to put the most-ever socks on one foot. She fell short both times, but then she figured out she was a plank prodigy during tryouts for the volleyball at the Dawson School in Lafayette. She couldn’t run a mile with the other volleyball hopefuls, so volleyball coach Holly Novak suggested she spend the time performing an equally grueling exercise: planking, in which a person assumes a push-up position and holds it while resting on the forearms. The first time she tried, Gabi held a plank for 12 minutes. “I was astonished the first time she did it,” Novak told Kate Gibson of the Denver Post. “I have to give all the credit to Gabi on this. I have supplied some workouts, but she has really gone after the record.”
Twelve minutes was only the beginning for Gabi. She began practicing holding a plank for 40 minutes or more. “Boredom is a problem and distraction helps a lot,” Gabi told Gibson. She planks while watching ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ reading a book, and enjoying the company of her dog. She was aiming to break the record for a 40 minute, 1 second plank held by Boise’s Eva Bulzomi, and to raise money for Children’s Hospital Colorado while doing so.
Gabi made her attempt on April 19 at the East Boulder Rec center, and as you can see in this video, she held the plank for an incredible one hour and 20 minutes. Now she just needs to wait for the people at Guinness to verify her accomplishment. In the process, she has raised more than $17,000 for Children’s Hospital. Now that’s what we call a sweet sixteen year old.
MORE: Remembering A Remarkable Woman Who Raised $1 Million for Charity
Can Riding Tricycles Help These Injured Vets?
Who would have guessed that what some veterans need most is a tricycle? Portage, Mich.-based nonprofit Lest We Forget Our Vets did, and they have been providing disabled veterans with specially designed tricycles to increase their mobility and provide them with a form of exercise that accommodates their physical needs. AMBUCS, a national nonprofit that works to enhance independence in people with disabilities, initially developed the AmTryke as a therapeutic vehicle for children with disabilities, and since has expanded to adult models. The tricycle provides stability that a two-wheeled bike can’t, and each AmTryke can be pedaled either with the feet or hands.
T.W. Lane, director of Lest We Forget Our Vets, told Alex Jokich of NewsChannel 3 that the AmTrykes build strength, increase mobility, and improve self-esteem in veterans who may not have been able to get around much without them. The nonprofit provides AmTrykes to veterans suffering from physical disabilities, PTSD or the after effects of a traumatic brain injury.
Recently Lest We Forget Our Vets brought an AmTryke to Victor Van Fleet, a 95-year-old World War II Veteran, who crashed his two-wheeled bike last year and thought his cycling days were behind him. Van Fleet has been enjoying pedaling in his Kalamazoo community. “It allows you to do things you couldn’t do before,” he told Jokich. “You can observe the sky above and the sunshine and the birds and the trees. You see things that you’ve never seen before on a two-wheeler.”
MORE: Can Being Naked Help Treat PTSD?
These Blind Vets Train to Climb North America’s Highest Mountain
Scaling mountains can invigorate the spirit. But is the same true if you can’t see the view from the peaks you’re climbing?
Two inspiring climbers training to summit Alaska’s Denali are demonstrating that sight is not a barrier when it comes to mountain climbing.
During their service with the Army in Iraq, Scott Smiley lost his vision to a car bomb and a grenade blinded Marty Bailey. In March, the two met with climbing guide Eric Alexander in Summit County, Colorado, where they climbed Quandary and Lincoln peaks to train at high altitude and mentally prepare for their planned May ascent of Denali, North America’s highest peak. If they succeed, they will become the first blind people to conquer its challenging West Rib.
Alexander is a capable guide for the vets: He’s summited mountains across the world, and guided his friend Erik Weihenmayer toward becoming the first blind person to summit Mt. Everest in 2001.
Smiley, who continued his military service after his injury as a teacher at West Point and Gonzaga, told Melanie Wong of Vail Daily that he can still perceive the beauty of the Rocky Mountains. “I still think it’s one of the most beautiful things,” he said. “The air is fresh, pure and clean. I live in Spokane, Washington, and you don’t get those senses hitting you all the time. There’s the beauty of seeing things, but those pictures go to my mind and it puts a smile on my face.”
It will take practice and courage for the vets to learn how to find steady footing with their ice-climbing crampons and to keep their ice axes and ropes from tangling as they climb. Bailey and Smiley are chronicling their journey and accepting donations to help with training costs on their website Blind Strength. “This climb is drawing awareness,” Smiley said. “It’s about doing things that I enjoy and being an example on others not to give up on life and push through hard times.”
MORE: Meet the Paraplegic Who Inspires Others to Think Outside the Chair
Can This Recreational Activity Heal Vets and Help Them Find Jobs?
There’s nothing better than the feel of the sun on your face, the smell of salt water in the air and the breeze blowing through your hair. For some veterans, hitting the open seas in a sailboat could be exactly what they need.
The Bayfront Maritime Center of Erie, Pennsylvania, already serves some veterans through its volunteer-run EASE (Erie Adaptive Sailing Experience) program, but now it’s ramping up its efforts to reach out to even more through its new Veterans EASE program. Bayfront Maritime Center Executive Director Rich Eisenberg told Ron Leonardi of the Erie Times-News that they will partner with the Department of Veterans Affairs and the VA Hospital in Erie, to provide healing experiences to former service members.
Only 40 percent of returning veterans in the Erie area make appointments with counselors, and of those that do, only 40 percent return for a follow-up visit. Eisenberg thinks that sailing could prove more therapeutic for veterans than a visit to a counselor’s office, especially given the success of a similar program, Veterans On Deck, in Charleston, South Carolina. Veterans EASE will feature year-round programs that focus on not only sailing, but also boat maintenance and building activities.
The center also plans on helping participants find employment, too. “Right now, there’s a 20 percent shortage of skilled workers in the maritime industry,” Eisenberg told Leonardi. “That’s projected by the U.S. Coast Guard to go to 35 percent in 10 years, because a lot of the personnel are retiring. These are excellent, high-paying jobs, and veterans are well positioned to be filling these positions because of all their military training.”
Sounds like a day of sailing could lead to a full-fledged job for some Pennsylvania veterans.
MORE: Leave it to Teenagers to Find the Most Fun Way to Help Disabled Vets
Meet the Paraplegic Man Who Inspires Others to Think Outside the Chair
Most of us can’t begin to imagine scaling walls of ice, let alone doing it without the use of our legs. Yet, that’s exactly what Sean O’Neill, a climber from Maine, did.
On February 26, Sean became the first paraplegic to climb the treacherous 365-foot-tall iced waterfall known as Bridal Veil Falls in Telluride, Colorado. O’Neill didn’t attempt this dangerous feat simply to get a rush. Rather, he did it to inspire other disabled people to reconsider what is possible for them to accomplish.
This is only the latest adventure for the 48-year-old Sean and his 44-year-old brother Timmy, a documentarian who captured the eight-hour ascent on film. In years past, they’ve scaled the 3,000-foot cliff of El Capitan in Yosemite and thousand-foot ice walls in the glaciers of Alaska’s Ruth Gorge. According to Rock and Ice, Sean developed special equipment that allows wheelchair-bound people to climb, using a technique he calls “sit climbing.” Timmy told Jason Blevins of the Denver Post that Sean is “the Leonardo da Vinci of aid climbing.”
It took a coordinated team effort for Sean to accomplish the feat — long considered one of the most difficult ice climbs in America. His crew used a sled to pull him to the climbing site and cleared avalanche debris off the road so he could crawl to the bottom of the waterfall. Friends set the ropes he needed and helped him position his padded seat and customized tools. “For a paraplegic to get out of their chair is really uncommon. In fact, you can not only climb out of that chair, but live outside the chair,” Timmy told Blevins.
Timmy, who co-founded Paradox Sports in Boulder, Colorado along with Army veteran DJ Skelton and others to provide adaptive sports opportunities to the disabled, hopes to premier the film about his brother’s climb — tentatively titled “Struggle” — in May at the Telluride Film Festival.
For Sean, reaching the summit was the perfect cinematic moment: “You are at the top, and it’s like I’m born as a new person,” he said.
MORE: This Documentarian is Filming Incredible Vets and Helping Them at the Same Time
This Veteran Suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury in Iraq. Now He’s Got a Chance to Win a Medal
All the athletes who qualify for the Paralympics have overcome obstacles to excel at their sports, but perhaps none more so than Army veteran Joel Hunt, who was named to the U.S. Paralympic Alpine Ski Team on Wednesday. Joel Warner profiled Hunt’s quest to make the team last year for Westword, writing, “during his three Iraq deployments, Hunt was exposed to more than 100 improvised explosive-device blasts, explosions that left him with a traumatic brain injury that, among other things, has slowly paralyzed his left leg.” Hunt had to use a wheelchair to get around after his 2007 discharge, and PTSD hit him hard—in a speech he often gives about his story, he says there were times he “wished that I had died in Iraq rather than face the difficulties of my situation.”
But then in 2008, when his health had been deteriorating for years, his parents encouraged him to attend a three-day event in Breckenridge, Colo. to help vets with traumatic brain injuries (TBI) learn to ski. Hunt had begun to leave his wheelchair for walks, and although he was skeptical about skiing, when he tried it, it appealed to him immediately. “Hold on,” Hunt told Warner he remembers thinking, “This is like roller skating.” Operation TBI Freedom bought him a ski pass, and Hunt skied 125 times that winter.
The next winter, Hunt began training at the National Sports Center for the Disabled’s program at Winter Park. The Challenged Athletes Foundation’s Operation Rebound donated the $3500 fee required to participate. Hunt kept at it, improving at ski racing year by year, and in 2013 he qualified for the Paralympic Alpine Development Program in Aspen.
Even with a paralyzed left leg and double vision, Hunt can speed down the slopes, and now he will be the first Paralympic skier with a TBI. He’ll join three other veterans on the Paralympic Alpine Ski Team: Army veteran Heath Calhoun, Coast Guard Veteran Chris Devlin-Young, and Marine Corps veteran Jon Lujan. These vets will head to Sochi to compete at the Paralympic Winter Games from March 7 through 16, offering ski racing fans plenty to cheer about.
MORE: Leave it to Teenagers to Find the Most Fun Way to Help Disabled Vets
Leave It to Teenagers to Find the Most Fun Way to Help Disabled Vets
Pittsford, N.Y., high school juniors Jared Whitaker and Drew Redish have always loved two things: skiing and helping others. So they founded the charitable group SSWISH, which stands for Skiers and Snowboarders Wish to Make a Difference. For their first project they raised money for Oasis Adaptive Sports, a non-profit that provides outdoor adventures and sporting activities to disabled veterans. On January 17, SSWISH held a “Ski-Lay”–a relay race on skis–at Bristol Mountain north of Rochester, during which costumed teams, including one wearing tutus and Mardi Gras beads, competed and raised money for Oasis. According to SSWISH’s Facebook page, adaptive equipment used to help disabled veterans learn how to ski was also on hand. Reddish told Stacey Pensgen of WROC, “Jared and I have always kind of been interested in helping veterans in some way, but we’re like, ‘we’re teenagers, what can we really do?’ so we decided to target something that we love, skiing.” The success of their Ski-Lay proves there’s plenty that teenagers can do to help vets.
This Paralyzed Veteran Can Hunt and Fish Again, Thanks to the Generosity of His Community
Andrew Pike, 28, grew up in Idaho hunting and fishing. But in 2007 while Pike was serving in the Army in Iraq, he was hit by a sniper’s bullet that exited his back and left him paralyzed from the waist down. When he returned home to Idaho, his favorite activities were far more precarious than before. Bill Potter, the chairman of Higher Ground, an organization in Sun Valley, Idaho, that helps veterans participate in adaptive and wilderness-oriented sports, went fishing with Pike one day and recalled to Kimberlee Kruesi of MagicValley.com that he told him, “If you make one small move, you might fall in and I’m 70 years old, I’m not going to be able to get you out.”
A mission was born to acquire an all-terrain wheelchair for Pike that he never thought he could afford. Idaho’s Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter invited Pike to come meet him on January 22 and take a tour of the statehouse, but when Pike arrived, Otter, Pike’s family and friends and many others surprised him with the presentation of a specially-equipped chair. The chair has a camouflage seat, sturdy wheels, a flashlight, a gun rack, and even an adjustment that allows the strapped-in Pike to stand. According to NWCN News, Potter told the crowd that Higher Ground and Healing Waters Flyfishing were determined to raise the money for the chair. “What the heck,” he said, “We’re from Idaho! We can do this! So we did.”
MORE: How A Fishing Trip Can Change A Disabled Veteran’s Life