Villagers For Veterans Helping Hope Come Home

Villagers for Veterans salute quadruple amputee veteran of Afghanistan and Iraqi wars

Villages News
Larry Lentz
November 19, 2017

"Since its formation in 2014, Villagers for Veterans has raised more than $500,000. The organization has presented 19 all-terrain wheelchairs to paraplegic and quadriplegic veterans who had served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Besides the many fund raising activities, it sponsors educational initiatives such as PTSD seminars and provides respite services for care-giving families."

Marie Bogdonoff and John Peck, center, Saturday night at SeaBreeze Recreation Center. Also with them, from left, are Joe Bogdonoff, John Woodall, president of Camp4Heroes, Jennifer Peck and Shanda Taylor Boyce with Timber. 

With its goal of $10,000, a Villagers For Veterans fundraiser, Saturday evening, will help a military hero continue his incredible battle to return to a life of self-independence.

John Peck, then a 24-year-old Marine, had lost both arms and legs stemming from an improvised explosive device (IED) in Afghanistan, May 24, 2010.  He then spent two years in Walter Reed National Military Medical Center undergoing 27 surgeries, months of daily medical procedures, and endured countless hours of intensive rehabilitation. 

Peck became the third quadruple amputee of the Afghan and Iraq wars, and the first Marine to receive a double-arm transplant.  He also has the distinction of being only one of two people to ever survive blood contamination by the flesh-eating fungus, Aspergillosis.

Some 250 Villagers gathered at the SeaBreeze Recreation Center to honor his wartime service and financially support Peck’s on-going recuperation. The evening was spearheaded by Marie Bogdonoff, Villages for Veterans founder and president.
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Quadruple Amputee Veteran Has New Arms

If you are having a bad time, take a look at his face, then read all he's gone through. You want some inspiration? You want some hope that life can change if our outlook does? Here it is!


Afghan war veteran who lost all his limbs learns to live with new arms
THE FREE LANCE–STAR
By KRISTIN DAVIS
November 12, 2017

He was a quadruple amputee, one of five from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it wasn’t long before a team of doctors visited Walter Reed to talk to him about an arm transplant—attaching the arms of a dying person onto what remained of his.

Peter Cihelka The Free Lance Star

After the 16-hour surgery, after the nerve blockers dented pain so torturous he nearly asked the doctors to undo all that he’d pinned his hopes on, John Peck looked down at his hands and wondered about the man they’d come from.

A tiny white scar, narrow as a hair’s breadth, ran like a dash across his right wrist. He turned them over. No calluses on the palms or fingers. The man who’d given him what a bomb blast took away had not played guitar or gardened or labored with his hands.

Peck lay in a hospital bed at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, 500 miles from his home in Spotsylvania County where the wait for a double-arm transplant had dragged on for more than two years.

In the weeks after he was approved for the surgery in 2014 and placed on a waiting list, Peck’s cellphone had become like a limb itself, never leaving his side. But weeks turned to months and soon a year had passed with no call. As a second year approached, he no longer clung to it in the same way.

Sometimes, he even wheeled himself outside without it.
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Veteran From Green Beret to Inspirational Bodybuilder

This Veteran Lost 2 Limbs in Afghanistan. Now He's an Award-Winning Bodybuilder
Men's Health
Stacey Leasca
November 11, 2017

“I had a couple of bad days being in the hospital because I'd worked so hard to get into Special Forces, and that’s what I wanted to do, and that was ripped away from me.” Jared Bullock

Photograph courtesy of ​Jared Bullock

While Bullock’s fitness has always been a key part of his life, he now has a new, more focused approach. That’s thanks in part to the help of Home Depot and the Gary Sinise Foundation, which built a home gym for Bullock and packed it with equipment he can use and adapt for his new body.

Jared Bullock isn’t the kind of guy you’d want to compete against in, well, anything. The rugged-looking redhead from Illinois will beat you without question at every event, every time, because he simply doesn’t understand the concept of failure.

Bullock, who joined the military after 9/11, served two tours in Iraq before beginning training for Special Forces. On Oct. 13, 2013, he received a Green Beret and was deployed to Afghanistan on an A-team.

Now, Bullock’s sharing what he’s learned. Each year he works with amputee children at a summer camp, showing them techniques they can use to stay healthy and to ensure they don’t gain asymmetrical strength, which can hurt them in the long run.
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Veteran Needs Help With Medical Bills?

Bellevue community rallies around Iraq War veteran

KETV 7 ABC News 
James Wilcox 
November 10, 2017

And Justin also recently learned his prosthetic, part of a rare procedure done in Australia, also isn't covered by insurance. The cost is close to six figures.

BELLEVUE, Neb. — Justin Anderson was deployed to Iraq in 2003. He enlisted in the U.S. Army as a high school student in Bellevue. "Two weeks after after graduation he was on the plane heading to boot camp. He was ready to rock n roll," Justin's mom, Lisbeth Anderson, said. 

Nobody was ready for what happened next. Just four months into his tour, Justin and his fellow soldiers were attacked. Justin suffered a gunshot wound to the knee. "To date, I've had a total of 27 major surgeries. 23 of those were on my left knee," Justin said.

The injury eventually led to the amputation of his leg, which came a year after another setback. "In June of 2013 I was diagnosed with Astrocytoma, which is a form of brain cancer," Justin said. He fought the cancer with chemotherapy and radiation. The battle lasted more than two years, but Justin is now in remission. read more here

Amputee 94-year-old World War II Veteran Stands for National Anthem!

Missing leg won't keep 94-year-old veteran from standing for national anthem

The Buffalo News 
By LOU MICHEL 
October 5, 2017

Marian Morreale, a Coast Guard veteran, was honored during the national anthem at the Buffalo Sabres home opener on Friday, October 6 2017.SCREENSHOT VIA NHL

Marian Morreale has been practicing how to stand for the last three months. She is a 94-year-old World War II veteran and her left leg was amputated last year.

But she practiced standing so that she could when the national anthem  opening game of the Sabres tonight.

She is trying to make a point.

"I think for these young athletes and the salaries they make, they should stand for the national anthem," she said. "But I don't think our president should use that word, SOB." 
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Amputee Afghanistan Veteran Happy to Pull The Trigger...on Moose and Hopelessness

For this injured veteran, this year’s moose hunt was more than just a hunt

Bangor Daily News

John Holyoke

September 28, 2017

“So I was like, ‘I’ll just keep moving with it.’ I kind of accepted it. And now I have this opportunity. That’s the way I see it. God saved me for a reason. I get to share my story with everybody.” Zachary Stinson

Zachary Stinson of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, with the moose he shot a on the opening day of the 2017 moose season season in Maine. Stinson, a former Marine, was injured in Marjah, Afghanistan, seven years ago. Gabor Degre BDN

Among the dozens of hunters who visited Gateway Variety in Ashland on Monday morning, one had a story to share that was less about moose and more about life. It was a tale of tragedy, recovery and appreciation. And as Zachary Stinson explained, it’s a story he feels he has learned can make a difference to others.

Stinson is a direct, friendly 28-year-old who drove 15 hours from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, to take part in his own hunt of a lifetime.

Hours after pulling the trigger, Stinson was still excited, eagerly describing the hunt a group of locals helped set up for him.
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Double Amputee Vietnam Veteran Helps Others in War Zones

Vietnam veteran builds prosthetics in war zones
Charleston Gazette Mail
Douglas Imbrogno
September 22, 2017

“The majority of my patients — 90 percent of them — are war-related,” Evans said. “Land-mine victims or gunshot victims. Victims of conflict.” But at clinics and rehabilitation centers from El Salvador to Iraq, he and his technicians are not ones to turn anyone away.

Courtesy photo - Dave Evans often sees the youngest victims of the Syrian conflict in need of prosthetic limbs, like this young girl from a refugee camp who came to the clinic where the Cabin Creek native was working last year in Amman, Jordan.

Dave Evans’ life didn’t end the day he lost both his legs below the knees in Vietnam.

But the explosive booby trap the Cabin Creek native stepped on along a rice paddy dike on Dec. 4, 1970, would determine the course of his life to come.

Evans looks back at his experience as a soldier in the new Suzanne Higgins documentary, “Vietnam: West Virginians Remember,” which screens at 7 p.m. Sunday on West Virginia Public Broadcasting, in advance of an episode of the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary, “Vietnam.”

Evans is quoted quite piercingly in the documentary about what Vietnam meant to small-town West Virginia teens like him, shipped off to a place they could not have found on a map.

“When you send an 18-year-old kid to war, and they cross that bridge from peacetime into wartime, there’s no way they ever come back,” Evans said. “That bridge is burnt. You’ve changed forever.”

He looks back in the documentary to his life as a combat Marine, but the notable life that came after Vietnam for him is worth consideration, too.
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UK:Amputee Afghanistan Veteran "Couldn't Prove Disability" Without a Card?

War hero blown up in Afghanistan barred from boarding train 'because he couldn't prove disability' 
The Herald 
Miles O'Leary 
September 8, 2017

Andy, who holds the record for being the world’s fastest single leg amputee, said having to prove his disability was quite disheartening.

Andy Grant was led away because he couldn't produce his disability railcard

An amputee war hero blown up in Afghanistan was barred from boarding a train and escorted by police from the station after being unable to 'prove' his disability.

Former Royal Marine Andy Grant was injured in an explosion in Afghanistan in February 2009 and had his right leg amputated in November 2010.

The 28-year-old, who now has a prosthetic leg, was left in total disbelief after a member of Virgin Trains staff asked him: "How do we know you're even disabled?" when he was unable to produce his disability railcard.

The 28-year-old, who now has a prosthetic leg, was left in total disbelief after a member of Virgin Trains staff asked him: "How do we know you're even disabled?" when he was unable to produce his disability railcard.
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Afghanistan Veteran Gives Thumbs Up After Amputation

Veteran receives high-tech prosthetic hand

Department of Veterans Affairs

September 5, 2017

Veteran Daniel Glanz lost his right hand while serving in Afghanistan 12 years ago. Today, Glanz has a brand new prosthetic hand with world-class technology which gives him the ability to adjust hand functions on the fly in ways that were not possible in the past.

For the past 10 years, Glanz has been coming to McGuire VA Medical Center to receive the latest in prosthetic hand technology. This past spring, he was fitted for an iLimb Quantum prosthetic hand, which is programmable with a smartphone app and can change functions with a simple gesture.

The device can be programmed with up to four different hand settings at a time. Each setting is activated by the wearer gesturing with his arm to the left, right, forward or back.

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This Police Officer Can Do Job With One Arm

ONE ARM, NO PROBLEM: Army veteran amputee fulfills dream of becoming police officer

Idaho State Journal

By Shelbie Harris 
August 15, 2017


“No matter where you go or what you do there is going to be pros and cons to it. But it all depends on how you picture it. If you look for the bad stuff that’s all you’re going to get. If you look for the positive and the good out of it, no matter what situation you are in you’ll see it.” Carlos Lugo

Pocatello Police Department patrolman Carlos Lugo is an Army veteran who lost half of his left arm in a roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan. But he didn’t let that stop him from becoming a police officer.

POCATELLO — As a 9-year-old living in Stockton, California, Carlos Lugo grew up in a very low-income family.

His mother, a single parent surviving on government checks to feed the mouths of himself and three younger siblings, bounced around from house to house whenever the rent was too high or the bills began to stack up. That was difficult for Lugo, but watching his mom endure constant episodes of domestic violence inflicted by the men in her life was nearly unbearable.

At the brutal height of one such attack, Lugo got a signal from his mom to run to a neighbor’s house and phone the police for help — something he said she rarely asked him to do.

That’s where Pocatello police Capt. Roger Schei first encountered Lugo.

Schei said Lugo never struggled to keep up.

“Everything that we taught he was able to do,” Schei said. “No matter what he was able to find a way. He never asked for special treatment or considerations, and he just figured out a way to get it done.”
Pocatello Police Chief Scott Marchand has similar praise for Lugo, who has now been on the police force a little less than six months.

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Triple Amputee Gets Keys to New Home and Future

Triple amputee veteran receives home through Gary Sinise Foundation

Oregon Live

Samantha Swindler

August 12, 2017

As the ceremonial unveiling of his new home concluded Friday, retired U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Wade Mitcheltree exited the stage with his wife and two sons. He paused at the stairs, decided against them, and instead sat on the raised platform.

Sarah SilbigerTriple amputee veteran receives smart home in TigardU.S. Army veteran Wade Mitcheltree and his family are presented a new smart home from the Gary Sinise Foundation Friday morning in Tigard. The home is specially designed to accommodate Mitcheltree's needs as a triple amputee. (Sarah Silbiger/Staff)

He used his left hand and his right prosthetic arm to scoot to the edge, lifted his legs, rolled on his side, and in one fluid motion planted two prosthetic feet on the ground below.

"Improvise, adapt and overcome!" someone called from the crowd.

That's what Wade Mitcheltree, a triple amputee veteran, has been doing his whole life, but the work just got a bit easier thanks to the specially-designed, wheelchair accessible, 3,000-square-foot Tigard home he and his family received through the Gary Sinise Foundation.

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Iraq Veteran-Amputee More Proud of Surviving PTSD

'I wear my scars as a badge of honour': Iraqi war heroine says she's more proud of surviving PTSD than the bomb blast that buried her alive and claimed her leg
Daily Mail
Unity Blott
August 6, 2017

Hannah Campbell, 33, from Northampton, was injured in Basra in 2007
Blast left her with serious abdomen injuries, and a leg amputation followed
The former Army lance corporal defied the odds to have a second child
Despite her traumatic experience she says she's most proud of surviving PTSD

A mother-of-two who lost her leg an a mortar attack in Iraq says she's more proud of surviving PTSD than the blast that claimed her limb.

Former Army lance corporal Hannah Campbell, from Northampton, was given just a one in ten chance of surviving the horrific injuries she sustained after being buried alive in the 2007 Basra attack.

But the 33-year-old amputee, who has since battled suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder, now sees her scars as a 'badge of honour'.

She told the Sunday People: 'I don’t see these things as flaws any more, I see them as a part of my history and part of me.'
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Amputee Marine Getting Purple Truck

War hero to get gift of purple pickup
After losing legs, he helps children
Arkansas Online
By Hunter Field
This article was published today at 3:02 a.m.

FAYETTEVILLE -- Marshall Kennedy, a Marine who lost his legs when a bomb exploded beneath him six years ago in Afghanistan, cringes when he says the word "hero."

PHOTO BY SPECIAL TO THE DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Marshall Kennedy lost his legs when a bomb exploded six years ago in Afghanistan.

But on Wednesday afternoon, he's having to say that word over and over again inside a Fayetteville coffee shop. He's explaining the Human Exploitation Rescue Operative Child-Rescue Corps program, H.E.R.O. for short, of which he became a part after leaving the Marines.

Each time, he pauses and squirms in his seat.

"I didn't do anything special," he said, explaining his aversion to the word when talking about himself. "I just did my job. That was it."

Kennedy, 32, of Farmington will receive a hero's welcome at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock on Saturday when the Military Order of the Purple Heart, a service organization for combat-wounded veterans, plans to give him a specially equipped Ford Raptor truck.

It's the second year the national organization has searched the country for a Purple Heart recipient to receive the modified purple truck, and the first year an Arkansan was selected. read more here

Amputee Afghanistan Veteran No Longer Disabled According to Social Security?

For disabled vet, battle rages on as feds deny disability payments

Rapid City Journal
Tom Griffith Journal staff
7 min ago

“Somehow I was deemed no longer disabled by Social Security, and it’s been an absolute hellish nightmare. I wish I wasn’t disabled and that my leg grew back, and that my arm functioned, and that my gonads hadn’t been blown off and I no longer needed testosterone shots, and I could hear, and I didn’t have PTSD, and that I didn’t have a traumatic brain injury." 
Wayne Swier

Hannah Hunsinger Journal Staff

For 31-year-old Wayne Swier, a U.S. Army combat veteran who suffered devastating injuries from an improvised explosive device seven years ago in Afghanistan, this summer should have been a season of solace and celebration.

But fate and a federal agency seemed to have conspired to turn it into a nightmare.

Swier is set to marry his sweetheart in a week, and the couple plans to move into a new home near Johnson Siding built by the nonprofit Homes for Our Troops later in August.

By any account, it should be a summer of love for the Stephens High School graduate who spent the better part of two tours with the 101st Airborne’s “Band of Brothers” unit fighting the Taliban in the remote mountainous regions of Afghanistan.

Instead, in May the Social Security Administration deemed him no longer disabled and cut off his monthly disability checks, in a manner as harsh as the way that IED blew off his leg in a small Afghan village in November 2010.
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UK Amputee Soldier Can't Get Treated...Because He's Scottish?

Soldier who lost both legs in Afghanistan can't receive hospital treatment in England 'because he's Scottish'

‘I am sitting here without my legs because I fought for this country’ 
The Independent 
Narjas Zatat 
July 28, 2017 

A Scottish soldier who lost both his legs while serving for the British Army in Afghanistan has been told he can no longer continue to receive specialist treatment in England. 

Lance Corporal Callum Brown said staff at the Queen Elizabeth Birmingham Trust hospital, which houses experts in amputee and veteran care, said NHS England could no longer provide funding. 

The 28-year-old, from the west coast Scottish town of Ayr, was injured by a bomb blast during a tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2011 and airlifted home. 
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ESPN Exposes Stunning Combat Wounded Veterans

ESPN BODY ISSUE POWERFUL VETERANS!

Veteran and hopeful Paralympian Ennis on the power of sports

KIRSTIE ENNIS: "I attribute sports to who I am today. Rolling that into my recovery --that's what saved me." Photographs by Peter Yang Behind the scenes by Eric Lutzens

VA Testing Customized Limbs From 3-D Printer

3D Printing Aids Veteran Amputees in Prosthetic Limb Production, Now Used in San Antonio, Texas
San Marcos Corridor News
Katlyn Brinkley
Date: July 12, 2017

The effort to rehabilitate the minds, bodies, and lives of these soldiers is the motivation behind the commitment from the Department of Veterans Affairs and 3D printing corporations like Stratasys.

The US Department of Veterans Affairs has begun experimenting with the use of 3D printing to create prosthetic limbs for amputee war veterans in a more efficient and personalized system, and San Antonio is home to one of these machines.

This year, the Veterans Affairs Center for Innovation has partnered with Stratasys, one of the leading corporations for 3D printing in the world. Together, these organizations are working to revive parts of the body that were once dead, or lost completely, for US Veterans.

Limb injuries have become more commonplace in surviving war veterans because of the evolution of body protection armor. As it becomes more advanced, soldiers can withstand shots to the body that would normally be fatal. Limb injuries, however, are sustainable, meaning soldiers can continue to live, even with a disability.

However, technology has anticipated these results at an equally rapid rate. Prosthetics are artificial structures created to replace lost body parts and restore functionality. While one of the earliest prosthetic inventions is thought to be a set of artificial toes in Egypt from 3000 BCE, modern-day amputees will be experiencing an entirely new era of artificial anatomy.
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This is from 2015

Double Amputee Knows No Limits For Life Ahead

‘I was the one screaming’ 
Northwest Florida Daily News 
By Heather Osbourne 
Posted Jul 4, 2017

“I’ve had veterans come up to me and say, ‘Because of you, I didn’t go home and eat a bullet,’ ” Dague said. “It doesn’t matter who you are, that resonates with you.”

Mary Dague talk about the blast which took both her arms when she was serving as an Navy EOD technician in Iraq in 2007. At right is Dague's husband James Cribbett. Devon Ravine/Daily News

Purple Heart recipient and double-arm amputee Mary Dague said a person’s life can drastically change in the time it takes for a bomb to detonate.

Purple Heart recipient Mary Dague said a person’s life can drastically change in the time it takes for a bomb to detonate. The 32-year-old with rainbow hair and a spunky personality spoke from experience as she recently sat in her Niceville home — and played video games with her toes.

Dague, a former Navy Explosive Ordinance technician, is a double-arm amputee. For the past 10 years, she has dedicated her life to helping combat wounded veterans’ suicidal thoughts and depression by using a combined method of dark humor and her own personal testament.
read more here and great video interview too!

Innovation Provides Independence for Vietnam Veteran Amputee

For Two Veterans, a Freedom Restored for Independence Day
New York Times
Side Street
By DAVID GONZALEZ
JULY 2, 2017

“This is the first device that intuitively moves multiple joints at one time. With other technology, you had to use the hand, then stop. Use the wrist, then stop. It wasn’t fluid.” Dr. Leif Nelson

Fred Downs, who received a state-of-the-art prosthetic arm on Friday. “With a prosthetic limb, your independence and dignity are returned to you,” he said. “This is freedom, let me tell you.” Credit David Gonzalez/The New York Times

This Fourth of July weekend, Fred Downs and Artie McAuley will treasure independence in ways most of us take for granted, like grabbing a soda from a table or reaching into a pocket to answer a cellphone. And though football season has yet to start, for the first time in nearly a half-century Mr. McAuley will be able to raise both arms to celebrate a touchdown.

These simple, daily movements represent to them freedom in an intensely personal way: Both are Army veterans who lost part or all of an arm while in the service. Mr. Downs, a platoon leader in Vietnam, lost his left arm just above the elbow when he stepped on a land mine during a firefight in 1968. Mr. McAuley was assigned to an ordnance unit in upstate New York when a car accident cost him his left arm and part of the shoulder in 1969.

The men celebrated the start of the Independence Day weekend by becoming the first two recipients, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, of astate-of-the-art robotic arm that uses computers, sensors and motors to give back to them the simple, but essential, functions they had lost in their youth. The arm — known as Life Under Kinetic Evolution or LUKE — is the result of an eight-year research project by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (known as Darpa) and private companies. Unlike current prosthetics available for upper limb amputees, the LUKE arm allows for smooth and simultaneous movement using motors at the shoulder, elbow, wrist and hand to flex and turn or lift and grip.

Dr. Leif Nelson, who worked on the development of the LUKE arm, said that the number of people who had lost arms relative to those who had lost legs was too small to spur private research and development. That’s when Darpa, along with the Department of Veterans Affairs, funded studies to develop the latest prosthesis. They in turn were able to enlist private companies, working with Dean Kamen, who invented the Segway.
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Amputee Afghanistan Veteran is Now a "Road Warrior"

Disabled veteran surprised with special wheelchair
WCYB 5 News
Ellie Romano
Posted: Jun 24, 2017

ELIZABETHTON, Tenn. - Jeremy Young was deployed to Afghanistan in 2011 where he fell victim to a blue on green attack.

One of his Afghani counterparts opened fire on him and his comrades.

Young was shot 13 times and suffered severe nerve damage and had to amputate his leg.

Now, he has a new form of transportation.

The Road Warrior Foundation gifted Young with a massive wheelchair that can work in tough terrain.

"I couldn't believe that was for me. I wanted one of these chairs since I got hurt, and the first time I saw it I was like 'do you know how cool it would be to own one of those.'" Young explained.

The organizers of this surprise where very particular in choosing the right recipient.

Road Warrior's Mid-Atlantic Regional Director said they denied about 15 candidates before finding Young.
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