thedrifter
10-19-07, 07:36 AM
Published on Friday, October 19, 2007
For soldiers, it's their journey to recover
By Laura Arenschield
Staff writer
Some had lost arms and legs, others hearing and sight. At least one couldn’t feel his body below his chest.
It didn’t matter.
The cyclists riding in the Wounded Warrior Program’s Soldier Ride this week are soldiers and Marines, most of them injured in the Middle East, and they know how to finish a mission.
The ride started Thursday, with a mission nothing less than this: Bike almost 40 miles, from the Airborne & Special Operations Museum in downtown Fayetteville to Melvin’s Hamburgers and Hot Dogs in Elizabethtown.
Do it with minimal stops. Do it knowing the ride is just the first of a four-day journey from Fayetteville to Spartanburg, S.C. Do it despite the rain, despite the heat, despite the fact that you only have one leg or that the only thing that can power you are your arms or that you can’t see or hear out of the right side of your head.
Do it for other service members wounded over there, to raise awareness and money to help them, because they’re your comrades and that’s what the military is all about. Do it for the rush.
“The endurance of riding this bike, it revs me up,” said Tai Cleveland, who injured his back while training in Kuwait. “It’s not as easy as I thought it was — it’s very taxing. But it’s a good feeling.”
Cleveland is 42 and lives in Manassas, Va. He was hurt while deployed with II Marine Expeditionary Force on Aug. 12, 2003. He didn’t realize how badly his back had been injured and stayed through the last three months of his deployment. When he returned in November of 2003, he had two surgeries to repair his back within 12 hours of one another.
Even now, despite the surgeries and rehabilitation, Cleveland can’t feel his body below his chest. On Thursday morning, he climbed from his wheelchair into a three-wheel cycle that he powered with his hands.
Cleveland said he found out about the Wounded Warrior Project, which helps injured service members and their families, through the hospital and the Internet.
When wounded service members come into a military hospital, project volunteers give them backpacks with calling cards, clothes and CD players. The project raises money through a variety of fundraisers, including golf classics, martial arts competitions and eating contests.
The Soldier Ride started in 2004 as a 4,200-mile cross-country trek that raised more than $1 million, said Woody Groton, national director of the ride. This year, Soldier Ride planners broke that cross-country trip into smaller sections. Injured veterans earlier this year rode from Phoenix to Las Vegas and from Washington, D.C., to Montauk, N.Y.
This trip started in Fayetteville and will end Sunday in Spartanburg.
Most of the more than 20 riders hadn’t met each other before Thursday. But before the ride even started, they already were joking around.
“Dude, you’re missing a leg!” one gasped jokingly to another.
“It’s not doping!” another shouted as he grabbed onto the back of a Wounded Warrior van to hitch a ride.
At their first stop, a McDonald’s on N.C. 87 in Gray’s Creek, the riders chugged Powerade and teased each other about their ride.
Brent Hendrix, a 6-foot-8-inch 22-year-old from Forest City who lost his right leg in a blast in Iraq in 2006, said he stopped to remove his prosthetic leg halfway into the ride.
“It was just tiring my arms out too much,” he said before lighting a cigarette.
The riders around him laughed.
“Youth is wasted on the young,” sighed Rick Leipold, who also was missing a leg. “The guys that go really fast are missing both legs, but I’m not going to cut the other one off!”
Ryan Kelly, who started working with the Wounded Warrior Project in 2003 after losing a leg to a bomb blast in Iraq, said the ride can be a life-changing experience.
“You made a sacrifice for the country, and to get an opportunity to see it at 8 mph, that’s really great,” he said. “And it’s like an instant bond with these guys. It just takes five minutes to feel each other out before we’re cutting up.”
For more information on the Soldier Ride or the Wounded Warrior Project, visit www.woundedwarriorproject.org.
Staff writer Laura Arenschield can be reached at arenschieldl@fayobserver.com or 486-3572.
Ellie
For soldiers, it's their journey to recover
By Laura Arenschield
Staff writer
Some had lost arms and legs, others hearing and sight. At least one couldn’t feel his body below his chest.
It didn’t matter.
The cyclists riding in the Wounded Warrior Program’s Soldier Ride this week are soldiers and Marines, most of them injured in the Middle East, and they know how to finish a mission.
The ride started Thursday, with a mission nothing less than this: Bike almost 40 miles, from the Airborne & Special Operations Museum in downtown Fayetteville to Melvin’s Hamburgers and Hot Dogs in Elizabethtown.
Do it with minimal stops. Do it knowing the ride is just the first of a four-day journey from Fayetteville to Spartanburg, S.C. Do it despite the rain, despite the heat, despite the fact that you only have one leg or that the only thing that can power you are your arms or that you can’t see or hear out of the right side of your head.
Do it for other service members wounded over there, to raise awareness and money to help them, because they’re your comrades and that’s what the military is all about. Do it for the rush.
“The endurance of riding this bike, it revs me up,” said Tai Cleveland, who injured his back while training in Kuwait. “It’s not as easy as I thought it was — it’s very taxing. But it’s a good feeling.”
Cleveland is 42 and lives in Manassas, Va. He was hurt while deployed with II Marine Expeditionary Force on Aug. 12, 2003. He didn’t realize how badly his back had been injured and stayed through the last three months of his deployment. When he returned in November of 2003, he had two surgeries to repair his back within 12 hours of one another.
Even now, despite the surgeries and rehabilitation, Cleveland can’t feel his body below his chest. On Thursday morning, he climbed from his wheelchair into a three-wheel cycle that he powered with his hands.
Cleveland said he found out about the Wounded Warrior Project, which helps injured service members and their families, through the hospital and the Internet.
When wounded service members come into a military hospital, project volunteers give them backpacks with calling cards, clothes and CD players. The project raises money through a variety of fundraisers, including golf classics, martial arts competitions and eating contests.
The Soldier Ride started in 2004 as a 4,200-mile cross-country trek that raised more than $1 million, said Woody Groton, national director of the ride. This year, Soldier Ride planners broke that cross-country trip into smaller sections. Injured veterans earlier this year rode from Phoenix to Las Vegas and from Washington, D.C., to Montauk, N.Y.
This trip started in Fayetteville and will end Sunday in Spartanburg.
Most of the more than 20 riders hadn’t met each other before Thursday. But before the ride even started, they already were joking around.
“Dude, you’re missing a leg!” one gasped jokingly to another.
“It’s not doping!” another shouted as he grabbed onto the back of a Wounded Warrior van to hitch a ride.
At their first stop, a McDonald’s on N.C. 87 in Gray’s Creek, the riders chugged Powerade and teased each other about their ride.
Brent Hendrix, a 6-foot-8-inch 22-year-old from Forest City who lost his right leg in a blast in Iraq in 2006, said he stopped to remove his prosthetic leg halfway into the ride.
“It was just tiring my arms out too much,” he said before lighting a cigarette.
The riders around him laughed.
“Youth is wasted on the young,” sighed Rick Leipold, who also was missing a leg. “The guys that go really fast are missing both legs, but I’m not going to cut the other one off!”
Ryan Kelly, who started working with the Wounded Warrior Project in 2003 after losing a leg to a bomb blast in Iraq, said the ride can be a life-changing experience.
“You made a sacrifice for the country, and to get an opportunity to see it at 8 mph, that’s really great,” he said. “And it’s like an instant bond with these guys. It just takes five minutes to feel each other out before we’re cutting up.”
For more information on the Soldier Ride or the Wounded Warrior Project, visit www.woundedwarriorproject.org.
Staff writer Laura Arenschield can be reached at arenschieldl@fayobserver.com or 486-3572.
Ellie