“When you go to some of these interviews and you roll up in your chair, you can see it in their faces, ‘Oh, man.’”
That’s how Enrique Chavez, a paraplegic veteran from Long Beach, California, described what it’s like trying to find a job as a disabled veteran to Andrew Edwards of the Press-Telegram.
Fortunately, a program called PAVE (Paving Access for Veteran Employment) is assisting severely disabled veterans like Chavez gain employment. Over the past seven years, PAVE has helped 439 of the 2,500 veterans who joined the program find jobs. “While that number might not seem scintillating at first blush,” said Sherman Gillums of the Paralyzed Veterans of America (an organization that aids U.S. vets), “we are focusing on the hardest to place: those with severe disabilities.” Gillums, himself is a Marine corps veteran who was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident in 2002, understands the unique challenges disabled vets face.
Paralyzed Veterans of America offers the PAVE program at seven locations in the United States, and makes its services available online to any veteran who wants to participate. PAVE counselors help veterans craft a resume using their military experience that will appeal to civilian employers, figure out the paperwork they need to access their benefits, learn about the differences between military and civilian culture, and recover from their wounds and psychological trauma. PAVE also reaches out to potential employers, informing them of the tax benefits they can receive from employing a veteran.
Navy vet Mike Metal fount a job with the Volunteers of America in Santa Ana, California with the assistance of the PAVE program. He told Edwards, “I love coming to work every day.” It’s clear the Paralyzed Veterans of America won’t rest until every vet they work with can say the same.
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Tag: disabled veterans
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.
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Meet the Georgians Putting Energy-Efficient Roofs Over Injured Vets’ Heads
Hardwood floors appeal to many homeowners. They’re attractive, durable, and easy to clean. But for wounded veterans, hardwood floors are often a necessity.
That’s because the smooth surface of hardwood floors makes getting around in a wheelchair less cumbersome. So in Calhoun, Georgia, an army of handymen is providing its services free of charge to injured veterans. Nine thousand employees of Mohawk Flooring in northern Georgia will work — free of charge — on homes that Building for America’s Bravest is custom designing for wounded veterans.
Building for America’s Bravest is a project sponsored by the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation, a non-profit formed after 9-11 to honor Siller, a 34-year-old firefighter and father of five who died trying to save people in the World Trade Center. Its goal: To build 50 custom “Smart Homes” for servicemen and women across the country who are severely disabled and to do it in an energy-efficient way — all while making use of the latest adaptive technologies, such as automated lighting, wider doors to accommodate wheelchairs, and iPad-controllable heating systems.
One recipient of a smart home is Corporal Todd Love, whose house is now under construction in Georgia. Love lost three limbs (both legs and one arm) when he stepped on an IED in Afghanistan in 2010. He’s appreciative of the work that the volunteers are putting into building his house: “You can provide a great service for your country without being in the military of being a firefighter or police officer,” he told Kimberly Barbour of WRCB. “[I’m] Looking forward to getting a home and one that’s accessible and hopefully I’ll have it for the rest of my life.”
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When This Sergeant Saw Vets Lined Up For Jobs, He Decided to Create Some for Them
When Sgt. Alec Haggerty of Killeen, Texas saw a line of veterans standing outside a military staffing agency, waiting their turn to apply for a job, he knew he had to do something to help. So he started EcoGrunt Home Improvements, a green construction and renovation business that currently employs five active-duty and retired military servicemen. It seemed a natural venture for Haggerty, who comes from a family long involved in both the military and construction.
EcoGrunt specializes in both commercial and residential spaces, offering a range of services from small handyman repairs to larger landscaping projects such as deck and rock wall additions. Starting a company was just the beginning for Haggerty, who recently launched a GoFundMe campaign with the goal of raising money for wounded veterans who need to remodel their homes because of injuries. Haggerty is pledging to match every dollar donated with donated services through his construction company. “I know I can’t help everyone, but maybe if I do this it will start a chain reaction,” Haggerty told Valerie L. Valdez of Killeen Daily News.
Meet the Marine Who Planted a Special Garden for His Fellow Vets
When San Bernadino, Calif., Vietnam vet Richard Valdez was coordinating a rehabilitation group at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Veterans Medical Center, he noticed something that would change his community forever. Therapy sessions would leave many vets intensely stressed, but when they returned a few hours later, a few seemed more relaxed than the others. Valdez asked the veterans what had changed. “They would say, ‘I tended my roses or lemon trees and that calmed me down,'” he told Michel Nolan of The Sun. “So I thought, there are veterans out there who don’t have the chance to do gardening, and maybe we could make it available to them.”
Valdez pursued his vision of creating a healing community garden for veterans with the help of members of Disabled American Veterans, San Bernardino Chapter 12. They planted a three-quarter acre organic garden in Speicher Memorial Park called the Veterans Exploration Garden. For two years they’ve planted and harvested a variety of vegetables and herbs—1,000 pounds, which they give to veterans, community centers, and passersby who lend a hand with the garden—and also host barbecues for veterans.
Maintaining the garden is a lot of work, but now the veterans are getting a hand from Home Depot, the Incredible Edible Community Garden, and volunteers. 65-year-old Marine veteran Rudy Venegas told Nolan the garden is incredibly valuable to him. “This is an outlet to help those who have fallen, are injured or are disabled,” he said.
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All These 10-Year-Olds Wanted for Their Birthdays Was to Help Vets
In Waukesha, Wisc., Mary Poblocki, Adrianna Alberts, and their friend Megan were turning 10 and knew just how to celebrate. “We don’t really need that much presents,” Mary told Yona Gavino of TMJ4. Instead, the girls asked for donations to the Veterans Employment Alliance (VEA).
Megan had the idea because both of her parents are veterans. Her mom Kathleen is proud of her daughter and her friends. “It tells me that I’m doing the right thing. It tells me that retiring from the service to be a full-time mom was the right decision,” she told Gavino.
CJ Brown of the VEA, a formerly homeless vet, is thankful for the donations that will go toward helping veterans and keeping them off the street. “Well, it’s cold out there,” Brown said. “Many of them get sick. Some of them are dying on the streets.” Admirably, Megan and her friends want to change that.
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For These Vets, There’s Solace in the Simple Act of Making Bread
Anyone who likes to cook knows there’s something therapeutic about baking bread from scratch. So King Arthur’s Flour Company in Norwich, Vermont, is opening up the kitchens of its baking education center to patients staying at the VA Medical Center in White River Junction. The veterans gathered recently to mix dough and bake bread together as a part of King Arthur Flour’s Bake for Good program.
They will donate the bread they bake to a farmer’s market the VA holds each week, raising money to help veterans. Susan Landry told Adam Sullivan of WCAX, “It makes me feel very good knowing I am helping my brother and sister veterans.”
Stephen Guidry, another veteran who participated in the bread baking, told Sullivan how much he enjoyed it. “Anything when you are having problems to take your mind off it, people to talk to. Something like this is great.”
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These Sisters Created an Incredible Place to Help Veterans
Sisters Melissa Spicer and Melinda Sorrentino joined the family business straight out of college—working along with their father and other family members to run Campus Hill Apartments in Syracuse, N.Y. When their father sold the business in 2007, the sisters decided to use their real estate and renovation acumen to benefit veterans, whom Spicer had been concerned about for decades. At age 16, she saw a homeless man holding a sign that said he was a veteran, and she told Marnie Eisenstadt of the Syracuse Post-Standard, “I thought, ‘Oh, my God. How can this be?'” Spicer began a charity that trained service animals to help veterans, and by the time the family sold their business, her non-profit needed more space.
So the sisters and other family members put up $700,000 to buy a vacant, squirrel-infested lodge in Chittenango, N.Y. near Oneida Lake and renovated it to serve as headquarters for Clear Path for Veterans, a nonprofit focused on all aspects of easing veterans’ transition back to the civilian world. Clear Path offers veterans a place to enjoy natural beauty, a dog training program, peer-to-peer counseling (the Wingman Program), acupuncture, massage, free meals and culinary training, a “Saturday Warrior Reset” program and more.
Clear Path serves 230 veterans each month through the help of volunteers. Spicer and Sorrentino do not take pay for their work at Clear Path, so most of the donations they receive go directly to helping vets. Spicer told Eisenstadt, “If what you hope to do benefits the greater good of the community, from beginning to end, never quit.”
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This Charity Went Above and Beyond to Help Veterans in Need
Habitat for Humanity is known for building homes for needy people, but a new program in Tuscaloosa, Ala. will focus on veterans with dilapidated houses and no money to fix them up. Habitat for Humanity has teamed up with Federal Home Loan Bank and is inviting veterans to apply for up to $15,000 in assistance. Meredith Armstrong of Alabama’s 13 spoke to Rosalyn Boston, the widow of an Army veteran who has been unable to repair her home since it was damaged by a tornado hit the area in April of 2011. Boston said, “I just want my floors done, you know my bathroom done right, and the water to stop going up under my house so that I can live like I want to live.” And with help from Habitat for Humanity, she and other veterans and their families should be able to live comfortably in their homes for years to come.
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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.
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