thedrifter
05-23-08, 05:20 AM
Helping A Colleague He Has Never Met
By DAVID SOMMER
The Tampa Tribune
Published: May 23, 2008
NEW PORT RICHEY - Josh Cooley and John Gibson are brother Marines.
They've served in Iraq, and they both did it while on leave from their day jobs as Pasco County Sheriff's Office deputies.
They have never met.
Cooley, gravely injured in 2005 by a roadside car bomb in Iraq, now lives at a California rehabilitation facility. His family hopes to move him late this summer to a new home in Brooksville. He will never return to work as a deputy.
Gibson is back at work as a detention deputy at the Land O' Lakes Jail. He is looking forward to meeting Cooley for the first time.
Before that can happen, however, Gibson will stage his second fundraiser on behalf of his brother-in-arms.
The first, a carwash held while Cooley recuperated from a traumatic brain injury at a naval hospital in Bethesda, Md., netted $5,000 in July 2005.
Now, Cooley is making excellent progress in rehab, his new home is nearing completion and friends and family have made a fundraising comeback, the next step to include a spaghetti dinner planned for Saturday and organized by Gibson.
"I have 80 pounds of spaghetti sitting on my dining room table," he said in a recent interview.
Cooley will not be able to attend the event, but his prognosis is brighter than anyone had hoped.
"He is doing amazingly," his mother, Christine Cooley, said in a telephone interview from Casa Colina, a state-of-the-art rehab center near Pomona, Calif., 30 miles east of Los Angeles.
"Everything they said he'd never do, he's doing," she said. "He's walking without a walker."
Emergency room doctors at an Air Force base in Germany once told Christine Cooley that her son was brain dead, she said, and her son's ex-wife, whom he divorced earlier this year, talked of removing him from life support.
Instead, Cooley made it back to the United States, where he eventually woke up to find he had been awarded the Purple Heart during a visit by President Bush.
Now, Cooley, who stands 6-foot-61/2 and towers more than a foot over his mother, can stand up on his own and navigate with the help of her light touch under his arm, Christine Cooley said.
"All I have to do is guide him into a chair or bed" and her son does the walking on his own, she said.
Now promoted to sergeant and scheduled to retire from the Marine Corps Reserve in June, the third-generation leatherneck can speak and has even been cracking jokes, his mother said.
"What we were looking for was for him to initiate conversation, and now he does that," Christine Cooley said. "He told me: 'Mom, you are awesome' and I asked him what he meant and he said: 'For sticking with me, for believing in me.'"
Also, her son has taken to singing along with familiar songs on the radio, and when his older brother Christopher visited last month, Josh "stood up by himself ... grabbed ahold of him and said "'I love you,'
" Christine Cooley said.
The Marine, who suffered a massive head injury when a car bomb exploded next to his transport vehicle and a piece of shrapnel the size of a credit card tore through his brain, has also regained his memory, his mother said.
"He knows what happened to him, and he remembers everything that happened before and after," she said. "He's just a miracle, and he is not supposed to be here."
Christine and Ed Cooley, who also is living at the California rehab center, hope to bring their son home sometime in August. When they get here, an ADA-compliant, 3,600-square-foot ranch house on a 2.5-acre wooded lot in Hernando County should be ready for the three of them.
The house is being built by a group of local businessmen.
BENEFIT DINNER
WHAT: Josh Cooley Benefit Spaghetti Dinner
WHEN: 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday
WHERE: Living Word Church, 5151 Rowan Road, New Port Richey
COST: Minimum donation is $5 and advance tickets are available through Nancy George at Florida West Coast Credit Union on Ridge Road at Regency Boulevard.
CONSTRUCTION FUND DONATIONS: Tax-deductible donations payable to the New Port Richey Rotary Foundation, note Josh Cooley on the check; mail to lawyer Steven C. Booth, 7510 Ridge Road, Port Richey FL 34668, or call (727) 842-8439.
Reporter David Sommer can be reached at (727) 815-1087 or dsommer@tampatrib.com.
Ellie
By DAVID SOMMER
The Tampa Tribune
Published: May 23, 2008
NEW PORT RICHEY - Josh Cooley and John Gibson are brother Marines.
They've served in Iraq, and they both did it while on leave from their day jobs as Pasco County Sheriff's Office deputies.
They have never met.
Cooley, gravely injured in 2005 by a roadside car bomb in Iraq, now lives at a California rehabilitation facility. His family hopes to move him late this summer to a new home in Brooksville. He will never return to work as a deputy.
Gibson is back at work as a detention deputy at the Land O' Lakes Jail. He is looking forward to meeting Cooley for the first time.
Before that can happen, however, Gibson will stage his second fundraiser on behalf of his brother-in-arms.
The first, a carwash held while Cooley recuperated from a traumatic brain injury at a naval hospital in Bethesda, Md., netted $5,000 in July 2005.
Now, Cooley is making excellent progress in rehab, his new home is nearing completion and friends and family have made a fundraising comeback, the next step to include a spaghetti dinner planned for Saturday and organized by Gibson.
"I have 80 pounds of spaghetti sitting on my dining room table," he said in a recent interview.
Cooley will not be able to attend the event, but his prognosis is brighter than anyone had hoped.
"He is doing amazingly," his mother, Christine Cooley, said in a telephone interview from Casa Colina, a state-of-the-art rehab center near Pomona, Calif., 30 miles east of Los Angeles.
"Everything they said he'd never do, he's doing," she said. "He's walking without a walker."
Emergency room doctors at an Air Force base in Germany once told Christine Cooley that her son was brain dead, she said, and her son's ex-wife, whom he divorced earlier this year, talked of removing him from life support.
Instead, Cooley made it back to the United States, where he eventually woke up to find he had been awarded the Purple Heart during a visit by President Bush.
Now, Cooley, who stands 6-foot-61/2 and towers more than a foot over his mother, can stand up on his own and navigate with the help of her light touch under his arm, Christine Cooley said.
"All I have to do is guide him into a chair or bed" and her son does the walking on his own, she said.
Now promoted to sergeant and scheduled to retire from the Marine Corps Reserve in June, the third-generation leatherneck can speak and has even been cracking jokes, his mother said.
"What we were looking for was for him to initiate conversation, and now he does that," Christine Cooley said. "He told me: 'Mom, you are awesome' and I asked him what he meant and he said: 'For sticking with me, for believing in me.'"
Also, her son has taken to singing along with familiar songs on the radio, and when his older brother Christopher visited last month, Josh "stood up by himself ... grabbed ahold of him and said "'I love you,'
" Christine Cooley said.
The Marine, who suffered a massive head injury when a car bomb exploded next to his transport vehicle and a piece of shrapnel the size of a credit card tore through his brain, has also regained his memory, his mother said.
"He knows what happened to him, and he remembers everything that happened before and after," she said. "He's just a miracle, and he is not supposed to be here."
Christine and Ed Cooley, who also is living at the California rehab center, hope to bring their son home sometime in August. When they get here, an ADA-compliant, 3,600-square-foot ranch house on a 2.5-acre wooded lot in Hernando County should be ready for the three of them.
The house is being built by a group of local businessmen.
BENEFIT DINNER
WHAT: Josh Cooley Benefit Spaghetti Dinner
WHEN: 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday
WHERE: Living Word Church, 5151 Rowan Road, New Port Richey
COST: Minimum donation is $5 and advance tickets are available through Nancy George at Florida West Coast Credit Union on Ridge Road at Regency Boulevard.
CONSTRUCTION FUND DONATIONS: Tax-deductible donations payable to the New Port Richey Rotary Foundation, note Josh Cooley on the check; mail to lawyer Steven C. Booth, 7510 Ridge Road, Port Richey FL 34668, or call (727) 842-8439.
Reporter David Sommer can be reached at (727) 815-1087 or dsommer@tampatrib.com.
Ellie